This report considers whether the budget documents released by African governments are sufficiently comprehensive to answer basic questions about budget policy and performance. It spotlights those African governments surveyed in the Open Budget Survey (OBS) with the strongest transparency records, and looks at: i) whether their budget reports are accessible online; ii) the number of years for which reports are available; iii) the coverage and detail of these reports and iv) the comparability of the budget data across countries. This note takes the OBS as a starting point and builds on it by digging into specific budget documents looking for relevant data.
Key Findings:
- Only a few of African governments publish their approved budgets and annual budget reports online. Existing evidence shows that levels of budget transparency across Africa are well below global averages, despite some important exceptions. Of the 26 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa included in the 2012 OBS, only seven make publicly available online a comprehensive set of approved budgets and annual reports, the two key documents needed to make sense of government budget policies and implementation.
- While approved budgets are relatively well structured and provide detailed expenditure estimates, annual reports could be substantially improved. The format inconsistencies that exist between approved budgets and annual reports are a serious obstacle to ‘clear’ budget transparency, rendering any analysis of government budget performance an arduous task.
- Disaggregated and detailed budget data are more difficult to come by even in more transparent countries. In the budget documents for the seven countries under review, aggregate budget information was always present. However, more detailed budget data were more difficult to find.
- Data quality remains an issue, but one that is beyond civil society’s reach, and that requires multi-stakeholder collaboration. Researchers and activists from outside government cannot verify the quality of the budget information provided in budget documents. Various inconsistencies point to possible weaknesses in the production of fiscal information within governments. International agencies and independent audit institutions are much better equipped to assess the quality of fiscal data, and have a legitimate mandate in this area.
- Budgets do not lend themselves easily to cross-country comparisons. Few of the African countries under review consistently use the UN Classifications of the Functions of Government, designed to ensure consistent functional budget classification across countries, or other international public accounting standards like the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics that facilitate cross-country comparisons.
Recommendations:
- An important short-term objective for the budget transparency movement is to encourage more systematic publication of budget documents.
- Budget documents can be hard to understand and make sense of for non-experts. In practice, meaningful and comprehensive budget analysis requires budget literacy and a good knowledge of a country’s institutional arrangements, as well as of specific programmes. Governments could make greater efforts to structure and present budgets in ways that allow a non-technical audience to understand them and make use of them.
- A comprehensive repository of budget documents could greatly facilitate access to budget documents and related information for a wide spectrum of countries, promoting comparative research and analysis. A coordinated effort at compiling and collecting key budget documents for many countries over an extended period of time could provide a better basis for comparative research and analysis on budget transparency, budget processes and budget policies across countries and over time.
