Addressing Budget Credibility

What do we mean by ‘budget credibility’?

Whether a government meets its revenue and expenditure targets during the fiscal year. When actual spending deviates from the approved budget, we describe it as either underspent (if spending is less than what was allocated) or overspent (if spending is greater than the allocation). The national budget may be underspent or overspent in aggregate and / or within a specific area of the budget.

Why is budget credibility important?

Normally, when the government enacts a budget, we expect it to function as a comprehensive roadmap that guides funds toward effective delivery of public services and progress on sustainable development. However, governments do not always collect or spend money according to their budgets. Consider that:

In Argentina, only a third of children had access to early childhood services. However, a program designed to close this gap has consistently spent less than its approved budget by as much as 70 percent.
In Nigeria, despite high occurrences of out-of-school children, the Ministry of Education consistently underspent its budget by 12% to 37% between 2013 and 2017.
In Sri Lanka, the agricultural sector employs 26% of the country’s labor force but suffers from declining productivity. Regardless, the government budget for agriculture and irrigation was underspent from 10 to 40% annually from 2011 to 2017, except in 2015, an election year.

If the budget veers off course, it raises concerns around the causes and the consequences. Moreover, repeated deviations from this roadmap can diminish public confidence in the government and create mistrust around its commitments.

Our work in this area

In addition to research, IBP has collaborated with and convened diverse stakeholders to reduce deviations from budget and enhance transparency on budget execution. For instance, in 2019, IBP and UNICEF co-hosted two panel discussions during the UN General Assembly on the importance of budget credibility to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Nigeria, IBP and the Budget Office of the Federation held a joint forum on the country’s budget credibility issues.

IBP has also supported multiple CSOs in researching and campaigning for solutions budget credibility challenges in their countries, including:

In Ukraine, IBP’s civil society partner, Centre Eidos, advocated to reform the procurement appeals process as it was being abused by some firms that were filing numerous bogus or trivial complaints to delay the procedure and prevent other bids from winning. These efforts led to the government including a provision in a recent package of reforms to the procurement law that would dissuade companies from misusing the right to appeal. Closing this bottleneck should improve the credibility of road infrastructure budgets in the country, which have been underspent.
In Serbia, IBP’s partner Transparency Serbia examined the ad hoc transfers of contingency funds from the national budget – widely believed to be used for political patronage to mayors in various municipalities. Transparency Serbia presented its analysis to the national audit office and the national fiscal council that oversees budgets and requested an investigation and stricter rules to guide the use of the contingency funds. The issue generated substantial media interest and engagement from the fiscal council that committed to examining the issue.

Read about our new three-year initiative, Strengthening Budget Credibility for Service Delivery, which will be implemented in partnership with UNICEF
Read our concept note on a forthcoming handbook – in collaboration with United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs – to support supreme audit institutions in conducting analyses of the credibility of government budgets through external audits. Also available in Spanish and French.
Learn how budget credibility affects communities “on the ground” in our latest impact story on the issue of potholes in Ukraine
Learn more about the start of IBP’s budget credibility work from our fact sheet

Events and Meetings

XXIV INCOSAI Side Event
Promoting budget credibility through external audits: handbook by and for supreme audit institutions

Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) have an important role to play in strengthening the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Checking and reporting on the legality and accuracy of public accounts, as well as the credibility of budgets, can be instrumental in governments delivering on their sustainable development promises. The importance of budget credibility is recognized in SDG indicator 16.6.1, and is relevant across all SDGs.

SAIs, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) and the Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government of the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DPIDG/UNDESA) are collaborating to develop a handbook on SAIs’ contribution to strengthening budget credibility through external audits.

During the event on November 9th, contributors to the handbook and the global government audit community will convene to explore key messages of the handbook and audit practices to assess and address budget credibility. The discussion will highlight lessons learned from current experiences and audit practices related to budget credibility, as well as opportunities to adopt and use the handbook, and further promote and institutionalize budget credibility assessments through external audits within INTOSAI.

SPEAKERS

Overview of budget credibility and the handbook (slide 2-4)
Ms. Aránzazu Guillán Montero, Senior Governance and Public Administration Officer, UN DESA.

Recurring audits (slide 5-15)
Mr. Neemias Albert de Souza, Federal Auditor, SAI Brazil

Auditing the public financial management system (slide 16-23) Mr. Thopan Aji Pratama, Senior Auditor, SAI Indonesia and Mr. Ngawa Mphande, Principal Auditor, SAI Zambia

Budget credibility risks across the budget cycle (slide 24-25)
Mr. Mouhcine Hanoun, Magistrate, SAI Morocco

Budget credibility risks at the program and entity levels (slide 26-28)
Ms. Cora’Lea Dela Cruz, Assistant Commissioner, SAI Philippines

Monitoring and follow-up
Mr. Anibal Kohlhuber, Advisor, SAI Argentina

Watch the video | Presentation | Visit the page | IMF Blog | Concept Note

Gender Responsive Budgeting in Budget Implementation Monitoring

While Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is traditionally thought of as a practice of government, civil society organizations are increasingly working in tandem and engaging governments to improve their gender responsive practices. Even when gender responsiveness is embedded into the budget, funds are often shifted during implementation in ways that tend to have disproportionate negative impacts on women, or the gender responsive commitments that were made aren’t delivered on at all, or the monitoring of budget implementation identifies that the policy designs do not respond to the needs and interests of women. The International Budget Partnership (IBP) & the Gender Budget Watchdog Network (GBWN) aim to highlight the importance of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) during budget implementation through an interactive webinar and joint working paper.

October 19, 2022: During this interactive session, we will learn from different actors in the space of GRB and budget implementation as well as share experiences, perspectives, resources, methodologies and approaches to analyzing and holding governments accountable to gender responsive budgeting during budget execution.

Call to collaborate! We welcome your input of experiences and resources for a working paper we are writing to document lessons and learning on analyzing and holding governments accountable to gender responsive budgeting during budget execution. Please fill out this form to indicate your interest in collaborating with us. (Deadline: November 7, 2022)

Watch the video | Download the Presentations and Agenda | Contribute to the working paper

Promoting Independent External Audits on Credibility of Government Budgets: How Supreme Audit Institutions assess and address budget credibility

June 16 2022: As we strive to build back better from global crises, strong oversight of government spending is more important than ever. External audits have an important role in ensuring a country’s budget is credible. Credible national budgets provide a roadmap to effective service delivery and to the achievement of long-term national objectives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

During this interactive session, we will discuss the results of a survey of the INTOSAI community and experiences of how SAIs are contributing to strengthening the credibility of government budgets.

Watch the video | Download the Presentations and Agenda | Download the report

Technical meeting for the development of a handbook on supreme audit institutions’ contribution to strengthening budget credibility through external audits

From May 26 – 28, 2021, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and IBP convened an expert group meeting as part of the ongoing collaboration to develop a handbook on the contribution of Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) to strengthening budget credibility through external audits. The handbook is part of a three-year initiative on “Strengthening Budget Credibility for Service Delivery” launched by IBP in 2020. Read the report.

How can external audits promote budget credibility? Leveraging the role of supreme audit institutions

On March 25, 2021, IBP and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) co-hosted an interactive session discussing how external audits may contribute to understanding and enhancing budget credibility. The session presented a policy brief developed by UNDESA on the value of external audits to promote budget credibility, and provided an opportunity to identify and discuss relevant issues to inform how supreme audit institutions can analyze and address budget credibility through their work. A recording of the event is available here.

Presentations:

Meeting Notes

Community of Practice: In 2019, IBP twice convened a Community of Practice including government, civil society, and international organizations to share knowledge and identify solutions to budget credibility challenges. These meetings culminated in the development of four priorities to mutually work towards: (1) strengthening public financial management systems, (2) empowering citizens, (3) including oversight actors, and (4) building powerful narratives on credibility. Summaries on these meetings can be found here: February 2019 and December 2019.
Making, Keeping, and Breaking Promises: a global review of government budget credibility. In May 2019, Jason Lakin delivered a lecture at Strathmore University in Kenya on government budget credibility. The presentation provided an overview of why credible budgets matter and shared the results from a global study on budget credibility.
Learn more: Download the Lecture| Download the Presentation