National budget transparency - a deterioration in the quality and comprehensiveness of government revenue and expenditure information (original) (raw)
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Since 2006 the International Budget Partnership (IBP) has conducted a biannual Open Budget Survey (OBS) to assess national budgets of around 90 countries in terms of their fiscal transparency. Responses from 92 of the 123 questions that constitute the Survey are used to construct the Open Budget Index (OBI) which ranks countries according to their budget openness. This article describes the OBS methodology in detail and explains how the Open Budget Index is constructed.
Measuring and Promoting Budget Transparency: The Open Budget Index as a Research and Advocacy Tool
Governance, 2011
Transparency in public budgeting has been a recognized principle of sound governance for a long time. Yet, reliable measures of budget transparency are hard to come by. This article introduces the Open Budget Index (OBI), a new tool based on surveys by independent researchers that compares key budget information published by governments across the world. Data from the latest survey, published in 2010 and covering 94 countries, reveal that on average, the state of budget transparency around the world is poor. Countries with lower incomes, weaker democratic institutions, and higher dependency on foreign aid and hydrocarbon sales tend to be less transparent. However, a number of countries have improved the quantity and coverage of the budget information that they publish, in some cases following civil society pressure based on OBI findings. More generally, OBI data help identify easy steps that governments and other actors could take to further improve budget transparency.
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Budget openness and transparency are key elements of the effective management of public finances, determining the fiscal risks, rational financial decision-making, increasing accountability by policy makers and improving fiscal policies. It is difficult to define budget transparency, and also its measurement is an exceptional challenge. This is because different researchers / institutions use different ways (mostly questionnaires or surveys) to measure the fiscal transparency. Our research is mainly focused on elaborating the openness of budget processes in Western Balkan countries (as a specific group of countries consisted of: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia) dominantly based on a globally accepted methodology designed by Open Budget Partnership (Open Budget Index and Open Budget Survey Tracker), and partly on our own analysis.
Budget transparency in Croatian counties, cities and municipalities (November 2014 – March 2015)
Newsletter - an occasional publication of the Institute of public finance, 2015
Despite improvements in the transparency of local government budgets in the Republic of Croatia, the situation is still far from satisfactory. 1 Some cities and municipalities performed remarkably well, with a special mention being due to Viškovo, one of 428 municipalities, for having published all the requested budget documents. The leader (as regards the average level of transparency for all local government units located in a county) is the Karlovac County and the least transparent are the Split-Dalmatia, Zadar and Bjelovar-Bilogora counties. Viewed by type of local government units, the most transparent are counties; cities are much less so, and municipalities are mostly non-transparent. The results for all counties, cities and municipalities are also shown on the interactive map. The analysis shows that the budget transparency score of a local government unit is not significantly influenced by its population size or its budget performance. It can therefore be assumed that transparency primarily depends on the local government authorities' political will. National and local government authorities use budget transparency to prove their accountability to citizens and gain their trust. Therefore, the Government and Ministry of Finance should tighten the obligation of local government units to publish key budget documents, including citizens' guides pertaining to them, within predetermined time limits. They should also penalize those units which do not comply with this obligation. Moreover, they should set a good example of the timely publication of key state budget documents, including citizens' guides, showing to local government units the importance of budget transparency for the efficient and equitable collection and spending of public funds. 2 This paper aims to present the latest results of the analysis of budget transparency in the counties, cities and municipalities of the Republic of Croatia. 3 Budget transparency enables citizens to obtain complete, accurate, timely and understandable information on the budget. It allows the general public to get informed on and influence decisions about
2022
According to the results of the latest Open Budget Survey (OBS), the availability and transparency of information about how the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina raise and spend public resources are described as weak. According to data for 2019, Bosnia and Herzegovina ranked 84th out of the total of 117 countries covered by the survey. It should be noted that the OBS survey is a world’s independent, comparative and fact-based survey that uses internationally recognized criteria to assess the transparency of public budget information, formal/institutional mechanisms for public participation in the national budget process, and the role of formal oversight institutions such as legislatures and supreme audit bodies in the budget process...
Budget Transparency in Croatian Counties, Cities and Municipalities: November 2021–April 2022
IPF notes, 2022
The overall average level of budget transparency in Croatian counties, cities and municipalities-expressed as the number of key budget documents published on their respective websites, stands at 4.5 (out of a maximum 5). All counties published all five requested budget documents, cities published 4.7 documents on average, while municipalities scored an average score of 4.4. However, 19 cities and 92 municipalities still fail to publish the three documents required by law, while 14 cities and 124 municipalities fail to publish the two documents whose publication was recommended by the Ministry of Finance. Two municipalities failed to publish a single budget document. The mere publication of key budget documents can only be considered the first, but #126