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USDA's Commodity Program: The Accuracy of Budget Forecasts

PEMD-88-8 Published: Apr 21, 1988. Publicly Released: May 09, 1988.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the accuracy of the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) commodity program budget forecasts for 1972 through 1986 to determine the reasons for errors.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Agriculture The Secretary of Agriculture should assign management responsibility for coordinating the forecasting program and for establishing a structured quality control program to a specific organization.
Closed – Implemented
The Secretary has complied with the GAO recommendation.
Department of Agriculture USDA should establish an ongoing evaluation program that ensures that forecasters regularly perform studies of forecast accuracy to determine what caused errors and to relate the errors to the components of the forecasting processes, so that resources can be allocated for improvement.
Closed – Implemented
USDA has implemented this recommendation.
Department of Agriculture USDA should ensure that the forecasting process and its results are documented and that forecast results include explanations of the limitations of the data, including forecast ranges based on historical error rates, alternative program implementation strategies, and alternative assumptions regarding supply and demand.
Closed – Implemented
GAO does not expect USDA to implement this recommendation because of internal constraints.

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Topics

Agricultural productionBudget outlaysCommodity marketingEconometric modelingFuture budget projectionsMacroeconomic analysisManagement information systemsPlanning programming budgetingReporting requirementsStatistical methods