In a submission to the EC, the IBP and Global Witness propose ways that Europe can provide support to developing countries that promote budget transparency and check corruption.
The first section of this chapter describes public investment programs, and the second section summarizes lessons learned from the experience of managing external assistance.
If the general public is able to monitor the delivery of services, it can help hold the government to account and, ultimately, improve the quality of the services being delivered. But to effectively monitor services the public needs access to information.
This note explores what information the government needs to publish to enable the effective public monitoring of the delivery of food security through the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) program in South Africa. It documents how much of this information is produced by government and how much of what is produced is publicly available. Finally, it assesses how regular, comprehensive, and accurate the published information is. While focusing on the SRD program specifically, this note speaks to some of the opportunities and challenges associated with budget monitoring as they relate to service delivery priorities in South Africa more generally.
By Linnea Mills (independent researcher).
This paper presents research that sought to document how, when, and why three donor agencies — the U.S. Department of State, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) — have adopted the Open Budget Index in language and practice; assesses the contributions of the Open Budget Initiative and its partners to achieving these apparent advocacy successes; and analyzes other factors that may have influenced the decision of these three donors to use the language and methodology advocated by the Open Budget Initiative. In conclusion, the analysis of the three donor case studies covered in this report shows that the advocacy efforts by the Open Budget Initiative have had varied impact in changing policy debates and guidelines.
The Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project, transporting oil from landlocked southern Chad to the Atlantic coast of Cameroon for export, represents the foremost test case of the extent to which oil revenues can be used to alleviate poverty in a challenging developing country context. The most innovative feature of the project is the establishment of a legal framework (Chad’s Law 001 and subsequent amendments and decrees) that earmarks money for poverty reduction expenditures and creates an oversight committee to ensure the transparent management of the country’s oil wealth. Touting the promise of petrodollars for Chad’s poor over public concerns that new revenues would be lost to corruption and mismanagement, the World Bank provided financing that catalyzed the ExxonMobil-led oil development. Given the dismal track record of oil-producing countries around the world and the high stakes in a country as unstable as Chad, this experiment has come into the international limelight. The fate of the $4-billion plus project is not only of vital importance to the people of Chad, who hope to reap its benefits but risk bearing enormous costs if oil production leads to corruption, conflict and the further concentration of power in the hands of a few. It is also of great interest to other countries facing the challenge of transforming their oil wealth into benefits for their people; to donors attempting to solve the problem of the “resource curse”; and to energy-hungry industrialized countries searching for new and stable sources of oil.