Budget, State and People: Budget Process, Civil Society and Transparency in Angola

Budget, State and People: Budget Process, Civil Society and Transparency in Angola

This study aims to improve understanding of the state of budget transparency in Angola and indicate ways to expand transparency and openness. It describes the country’s budget process and points out its weaknesses. For instance, Angola’s supreme audit institution, the Court of Accounts, has only recently started functioning and needs to strengthen its capacity; the court has strong legal powers but has produced no audit reports as yet and remains largely unknown to the public. While civil society groups have had only limited participation in the budget process, the authors describe prime examples of successful budget work. These include the effort by the Conferencia Episcopal de Angola e São Tomé (CEAST) to pressure the government to subscribe to EITI principles and a more just distribution of Angola’s natural resource wealth, and the Catholic Relief Services’ participation in the Open Budget Initiative 2006.