As Romania seeks accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), centering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can ground its budget in a clear, mission-driven, and performance-based vision. To actually achieve the global goals, however, the government will need to direct spending effectively toward critical development priorities—all while ensuring that funding is reaching the intended programs and beneficiaries.
One challenge that can undermine these efforts is budget credibility, a measure of how far governments deviate, during implementation, from a budget approved by the country’s legislature, either by overspending or underspending in different sectors and programs. The SDGs recognize this challenge with tracking indicator16.6.1, which looks at government expenditures as compared to the approved budget. To explore how budget credibility could potentially support Romania’s efforts to achieve the SDGs, this brief examines Romania’s progress on planning and executing its budget across seven SDG-related sectors.
