Skopje, 29 May 2024 (MIA) - North Macedonia has registered a slight decline in its budget transparency practices, according to the International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey 2023 from 36 points in 2021 to 35 points in 2023.

The survey, according to a press release by the Center for Economy Analyses (CEA), is the world’s only comparative, independent and regular assessment of transparency, oversight and public participation in national budgets. In this round, global transparency scores were 45/100, public participation was 15/100, legislative oversight was 45/100 and audit oversight was 62/100.

“Fiscal strategy should be produced and published and available for the MPs in the Parliament before the budget proposal is submitted by the government” said Marjan Nikolov, President of CEA, which conducted the research for North Macedonia.  

The press release also noted that the government and the Ministry of finance did not demonstrate discipline and determination in preparing and publishing the Citizen Budget on time, and that the Ministry of Finance continues to not produce a proper Mid-Year Review.

North Macedonia’s slower score was against a backdrop of modest gains globally and is the second worst in the region only after Bosnia and Herzegovina. The global average in budget transparency increased by one point, and public participation increased by two points. However, despite these modest gains, there has been a worrying drop in public availability of Citizen Budgets—a missed opportunity by governments to leverage a key tool to make their budgets more accessible to everyday people, said the press release. For the first time since 2017, fewer governments are making their in-year budget execution reports available to the public. “We continue to see modest gains in the survey, although closing space and conflict had an undeniably negative impact in some countries,” said David Robins, Head of the Open Budget Survey

The Open Budget Survey covers 125 countries that are home to 7.5 billion people and assess the openness and accountability of budgets that totaled more than $33.5 trillion in spending in FY 2022. Transparency helps the public understand the government’s budget priorities; public participation mechanisms enable them to contribute to these priorities; and formal oversight of the budget from the legislature guides and scrutinizes budget choices while audit institutions assess the legality, efficiency, and effectiveness of public spending. 

Photo: CEA