Project budget

A project budget is a structured overview of all planned expenditure, broken down by expenditure groups, activities, and years of implementation, which forms a mandatory part of the application for a non-repayable financial contribution in the ITMS21 system. Every line item must be assigned to a specific activity, substantively justified, and priced in line with the principle of economy – providers compare prices against benchmarks, that is, financial limits set out in the call, and against a market survey, which the applicant usually documents with three price quotations. Overvalued items are reduced by evaluators already at the expert assessment stage, which lowers the contribution with no possibility of compensation. A good budget also allows for ineligible expenditure, which must be covered from own resources, for a flat rate for indirect expenditure, and for a financial reserve for inflation, since increasing the budget after the agreement is signed is possible only in exceptional cases. During implementation, the budget is changed through a request for amendment, with transfers between items up to a set percentage usually permitted without an amendment to the agreement.