The score is still higher than the global average of 25, and better than those of regional countries such as China (6), Malaysia (12) and Indonesia (35).
Advertisement
In comparison, the top scorer for this year’s survey is New Zealand with 88 points.
Sri Lanka has ranked among countries in the world that provides the public with minimal budget information, a new survey showed.
Assessing 102 countries around the world, the 2015 survey found that Kenya has yet to improve enough to move out of the middle category on the Open Budget Index, or OBI, which gives each country a transparency score on a 100-point scale.
Mr Mataitawakilai said Government could improve this through continuing public engagements in budgeting, feedback on public submissions that had been received and how they were being implemented.
The IBP conducts a survey to track government’s performance in order to find out whether government was doing well with respect to the OBS. The eight documents accessed include: pre-Budget Statement, executive Budget Proposal, citizens’ Budget, in-Year Reports, audit Report, year End Report and mid-Year Report.
In the last pillar of accountability, public participation, Vietnam only scored 42 out of 100, which indicates that the government “provides the public with limited opportunities to engage in the budget process”.
The OBS assessment is based on budget related documents and it tests for three aspects of budget transparency: disclosure, oversight and participation. “It is also worth noting that budget oversight by the national assembly is still limited”, the Institute of Economic Affairs research analyst John Mutua said at the launch in Nairobi. This covers three areas of assessment; firstly, the level of disclosure in budget documents, secondly, oversight by the legislature and the Auditor General and thirdly, public participation in the budgetary process.
However, Citizen’s Constitutional Forum CEO Bulutani Mataitawakilai said it was very encouraging to see that Fiji’s budget transparency ranking had improved.
With regard to the strength of Kenya’s formal oversight institutions, the score for the legislature was 49 out of 100 and the score for the supreme audit institution was 67 out of 100.
They said however, that it was still a “relatively low score”. Seventeen of these countries provide scant or no budget information to their citizens.
Advertisement
The IBP collaborates with nonprofit organizations around the world to ensure that government budgets are more responsive to the needs of poor and low-income people in society and, accordingly, to make budget systems more transparent and accountable to the public.
