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FINANCE: Majority of Govt Spending Escapes Public Vetting

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 2006 (IPS) - Angola, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Mongolia and Vietnam are among the most secretive countries in the world about their own budgets, a new index gauging global budget transparency found Wednesday.

The Open Budget Index, the first to rate countries on how open their books are to their citizens, said the six countries provided no information about their expenditures and kept their files under wraps until well after they were approved by the legislature.

The index, released with a report detailing the findings, says that nine in 10 countries fail to provide the budget information needed for full government accountability. More than 50 percent, or 32 of the 59 countries surveyed, fail to make public all of the key budget reports they produce.

These governments produce the information for their own internal use or for international donors but do not make it available to their own citizens, says the report.

Only six countries – France, New Zealand, Slovenia, South Africa, Britain and the United States – provide detailed budget information necessary for government accountability.

The index is based on a questionnaire of 122 queries designed to collect comparative information on public access to budget information and budgeting practices involving central governments.

It is compiled by the International Budget Project, a Washington-based group that says it seeks to promote public and civil society participation in budget formation across the world.

The index tracks documents like executive budget proposals, pre-budget statements, and auditor and review reports.

“The most serious cause for concern is that 23 countries (39 percent of all countries surveyed) provide either ‘minimal’ or ‘scant or no’ information to citizens on their country’s budget,” says the report. “Countries in these two categories fall far short of the most basic requirements of budgetary openness”.

Countries that provide minimal information include Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cameron, Ecuador, El Salvador, Georgia, Honduras, Nepal, Uganda and Zambia.

Countries that offer almost no information about their budgets are Angola, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Mongolia, and Vietnam as well as Bolivia, Morocco, Nicaragua and Nigeria, another set of poor performers who offer scant information about their budgets.

The group says that being open about a country’s budget can help lenders, development advocates and aid organisations identify needed budget reforms.

The report says that countries that do not make it to the top of the list but are in second ranking could easily improve their performance by taking simple steps towards transparency.

Botswana, for example, which is classified under countries that offer “significant” information, could move to the top of the list by publishing a pre-budget statement before the legislative hearings. Sweden could also enhance its performance by publishing a comprehensive mid-year review.

“Having access to information gives us a voice in our country’s budget. It allows us to push for improvements in people’s lives in Mexico,” said Helena Hofbauer, executive director of the FUNDAR Centre for Analysis and Research, which conducted research for the index in Mexico.

“Without information, we have no voice,” she said.

But the mostly dismal findings of the survey show what a far off goal that is. Activists say they demonstrate how little influence most citizens of the world have over their own government’s handling of taxes and public revenues.

“In 53 of the 59 countries examined, citizens are limited by lack of access to information. In 10 countries, government accounts are closed books,” said Warren Krafchik, executive director of the International Budget Project, which coordinated work on the index, which will come out next in 2008.

“A country’s ranking on the Open Budget Index is a measure of that government’s commitment to accountability and transparency,” he said.

Another finding in the report is that in 16 of the countries, the executive branch can fire the head of the country’s external auditing body without the consent of the legislature or judiciary.

“The failure to provide security of tenure to the chief of the national auditing agency indicates the lack of a fundamental institutional safeguard to guarantee the office’s independence from the executive,” it says.

“There is much work to be done around the world before budgets are an open book to citizens,” said Pamela Gomez, project leader of the Open Budget Initiative at the International Budget Project.

“But countries could achieve major reforms simply by releasing all of the budget documents they already produce to the public,” she said. “With that small change, more than half the countries would improve their performance and, more importantly, citizens would be significantly more informed about the budget.”