The national budgets of 77 of 100 countries assessed by the International Budget Partnership “fail to meet basic standards of budget transparency,” according to a new survey by the U.S-based group.
The results “raise serious questions about the prospects for individual countries to overcome poverty and promote economic development and for international efforts like the Millennium Development Goals,” according to an IBP statement.
The 2012 scores “are very low” with the average score being just 43 on a 100-point scale. IBP said “this means that citizens have access to less than half the desired levels of budget information that they need to fully grasp how their government is using public resources and hold it to account.”
“There has been steady, albeit incremental, progress over the four rounds of the Survey since 2006,” the group said. The average scores for the 40 countries that have comparable data for all four rounds of the survey has gone from 47 in 2006 to 57 in 2012, with nearly all regions of the world showing improvements.
Among the weaknesses, the IDP highlighted that “the governments of 21 countries do not even publish the Executive Budget Proposal, the most critical document for understanding exactly how the government plans to manage the country’s finances.”
“Compounding this unacceptable lack of budget transparency are the Survey’s findings on the widespread failure of governments to provide sufficient opportunities for citizens and civil society to engage in budget processes,” according to IBP.
Looking at participation for the first time, IBP found the average score on participation opportunities was just 19 out of 100. “Only South Korea, which scored 92 on the participation measures, is judged as providing its citizens with sufficient space to engage in the budgetary process.”
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