A large and growing number of civil society budget groups have taken up work to improve the transparency of their budget processes, as well as to open up avenues for participation. What are the outcomes and lessons learned from Malawi’s budget monitoring experience?
A paper from The International Budget Project addresses that question and describes the monitoring process that civil society organisations in Malawi undertook in the year 2001-2002 budget. Priority Poverty Expenditures (PPEs) were identified and monitored in areas of health, education and agriculture spending. After civil society organizations worked with parliament to identify 12 PPEs areas, civil society networks involved in the relevant areas examined whether these expenditures actually were taking place. They did so by going to the field and visiting a sample of schools, clinics, and agricultural extension stations to assess whether resources were being distributed and whether the extra resources were resulting in increased or improved outcomes.
The findings were disappointing and showed that budget figures sometimes bear almost no relation to actual expenditures. Budget rarely reflects what actually happens. Other findings from the report are:
- Without protection, laudable budget commitments remain fictional
- Government has no incentive to clearly show expenditures in the budget that donors will not support or agree with, and as a result the budget set is often unrealistic. This can lead to considerable off-budget expenditure during the year
- For relatively little cost, civil society can monitor the budget on a nationwide basis and produce credible figures that can have a major impact
- Working with Parliamentary Committees offers both critical credibility and increased access to information
- Findings need to be shared with the Government to minimise mistrust and to ensure that the impact is as constructive as possible
- A structured media strategy is required to maximise the coverage of the findings
- Budget monitoring can be carried out in the absence of a PRSP. Yet, civil society has an important role in PRSP monitoring by focusing on a number of key public actions in the PRSP and following them through.
Civil society organizations, together with the Parliamentary Budget Committee, have begun pushing for greater transparency and delivery in this year’s Malawi budget. Policy pointers to ensure that resources are monitored from revenue collection all the way through central government down to the grass roots include:
- Budget should include quantifiable outputs for each PPE
- PPEs should be protected, with Parliamentary approval required for any budget changes
- Government must produce transparent and timely expenditure figures
- The only way that PRSPs can be implemented is to translate them to the budget.
