The Current State of Fiscal Transparency : Norms, Assessment, and Country Practices

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, there has been a
 growing effort globally to promote fiscal transparency,
 reflecting both that the public has a right to information,
 and that transparency contributes to more equitable,
 efficient, and effective fiscal policies. However, the
 overall state of budget transparency is poor: measured
 against the Open Budget Index, the national budgets of 77
 countries, home to half the world’s population, fail to meet
 basic standards of budget transparency. Efforts are underway
 to improve the coherence of the multiplicity of standards,
 strengthen the assessment of country practices, and to
 address important gaps in the normative architecture, such
 as norms for legislative oversight and direct public
 participation. Many governments could rapidly improve
 transparency by publishing reports they already produce
 internally, which points to the need to strengthen
 incentives for governments to be more transparent.