February 2019 | By Paolo de Renzio, International Budget Partnership
Improving budget transparency practices is particularly important to enable the adequate monitoring and assessment of governments’ efforts to tackle poverty and inequality, and to understand the impact that budgets have on different groups of people.
This paper, part of our work related to how budgets can promote equity and justice, looks at the information governments provide on the impact of their budget policies on poor and disadvantaged groups – and on poverty and inequality more generally. The analysis is based on the results of three questions from the Open Budget Survey 2017 meant to hone in on these issues. Findings demonstrate that, on average, governments publish very little information on these topics, thereby limiting the ability of civil society to monitor these efforts and hold their governments accountable.
