Uruguay’s
new Budget Transparency
Portal sets a world class
example
Uruguay’s
Budget Transparency
Portal,
launched on September 27,
introduces several
innovations regarding
information previously found
in various government
portals. It presents for the
first time in a one-stop
site and in an accessible
form information of the
expenditure of the public
enterprises, of the public
non-state parties that
provide public services, and
links performance indicators
and policy evaluations with
the allocations of the
expenditure. In a promising
way, it links the program
goals, from now on, with the
Sustainable Development
Goals, which will soon be
seen as an example for many
other countries.
At the launching event,
GIFT’s
Network Director, Juan Pablo
Guerrero, congratulated the
Office of Planning and
Budget’s (OPP in Spanish)
team, headed by Álvaro
García, for the results of
their effort to translate
the complexities of the
budget into user-friendly
formats and language, and
with simple illustrations.
The portal greatly
contributes to the
realization of the right to
know in Uruguay, by
explaining to the taxpayer
how public money is being
spent. Another remarkable
aspect of this portal is
that all along its design,
crafting and development,
the OPP engaged potential
users to take into
consideration their needs,
preferences and capacities.
Thus, civil society
organizations, students,
businesspeople, journalists
and public servants, among
others, have contributed to
this effort. To maintain
this dialogue with users for
their permanent feedback
will be fundamental to
continue providing the
relevant information in the
most effective formats.
The GIFT
network contributed to this
effort by offering peer
support to colleagues at the
OPP, a GIFT
Steward, and bringing the
experiences of other
countries closer. Indeed,
the teams from Mexico’s
Secretariat of Finance and
Public Credit and from
Brazil’s Comptroller General
of the Nation –two GIFT
Stewards–shared with
generosity their experience
of more than 10 years of
informing the public about
the destination of public
resources through portals.
From these models, since
2015, GIFT
generated a working group
that included Uruguay along
with South Africa, Indonesia
and Paraguay, and has
recently been joined by El
Salvador and the Dominican
Republic.
Without a doubt, the GIFT
network has in Uruguay’s
portal an example from which
peers will be able to learn
extensively.
GIFT
stewards at the Roundtable
on Fiscal Transparency and
Sovereign Credit Ratings
On September 21, GIFT’s
Steward, the Emerging
Markets Investors
Alliance, gathered credit
rating agencies (Standard
& Poor’s, Fitch
Ratings and Moody’s),
policy experts, and
investors to discuss how
to promote greater
understanding of why and
how fiscal transparency
related risks are factored
into the debt ratings of
emerging market
governments and into
investment decisions; and
to examine whether and how
alternative rating
methodological approaches
and data that increase
the importance of fiscal
transparency factors in
credit rating assessments
might improve the
default-risk
predictability of
sovereign bond ratings.
Credit rating
agencies were asked to
reflect on issues such as
what are the aspects of
fiscal transparency (e.g.,
budget and balance-sheet
reporting and accounting;
off-budget activities;
future liabilities;
contingent liabilities)
that sovereign credit
ratings credibly capture —
and what fiscal
transparency aspects are
more problematic for
ratings. Investors were
asked to discuss aspects
like the degree to which
fiscal transparency issues
are important in
investment decisions; and
how, if at all, do
investors assess fiscal
transparency factors
beyond relying solely on
much broader sovereign
credit-risk ratings. In
turn, policy experts gave
though to ways in which
credit rating agencies and
the policy-expert
community may strengthen
investors’ ability to
assess fiscal transparency
risks; and the leading
approaches and best data
available to make
cross-country comparisons
of key aspects of fiscal
transparency.
The meeting, which
included the presence of
representatives of the
International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank, and
IBP, allowed participants
to agree on future
conversations on the links
between fiscal
transparency, risk
assessment and trust in
budget sustainability, all
crucial elements for
credit worthiness of
sovereign bonds.
COMMUNITY
WALL
New
Cross-study “International
Practices to Promote
Budget Literacy”
World Bank’s Harika Masud,
Sanjay Agarwal, and Alfredo
Gonzalez Briseno undertook a
cross-country study ‘International
Practices to Promote
Budget Literacy’. This
study presents findings from
a review of illustrative
examples of initiatives
promoting budget literacy
among youth in selected
countries. “It aims to raise
the profile of budget
literacy in discussions
about curricula and fill the
existing literature gap by
documenting a variety of
practices that promote
budget literacy in a
collection of 35 case
studies from 34 countries.”
Study
on Tax and Trust just out
GIFT
Steward, the International
Federation of Accountants
(IFAC), along with the
Association of Chartered
Certified Accountants,
Chartered Accountants
Australia and New Zealand
recently released an
in-depth study of tax and
trust. The new study G20
Public Trust in Tax
surveyed more than 7,600
people across G20
countries on issues of
trust and international
taxation.
Some of the key findings
include: •
people want governments to
put tax cooperation ahead
of tax competition—73%
of people in G20 countries
think it is important or
very important for
governments to cooperate
with each other on tax
policy to create a more
coherent international tax
system; • 57%
of people in G20 countries
trust or highly trust
professional tax
accountants as a source of
information about the tax
system; and • in contrast,
people in G20 countries
have become deeply
distrustful of politicians
when it comes to
information about the tax
system, with 67% either
distrusting or highly
distrusting politicians.
Article
on public participation in
budgeting in Brazil
Public Finance
International just
published an article on
public participation in
budgeting in Brazil,
featuring Paolo de Renzio
(IBP) and Murray Petrie (GIFT).
The article is
interesting, both in the
principles for public
participation and in Paolo
de Renzio’s views on how
the current government is
letting the participatory
mechanisms lapse during
fiscal austerity.
Read the article here. Note:
to access the PFI site
requires free registration
This case reviews the
participatory budgeting
(PB) experience in
Germany, viewing PB as a
process that enables
non-elected citizens to
take part in prioritizing
or allocating public
funds. Participatory
budgeting takes place at
the city level (or
municipality), and, in
Germany, is typically
consultative, rather than
providing citizens with a
direct influence over
decision-making. It calls
upon citizens to
contribute and discuss
their proposals on
expenditure and cost
saving measures. It
usually makes use of an
online platform, and
promotes accountability by
providing information on
how citizen proposals and
inputs were taken into
account.
More and more local
authorities are
introducing participatory
procedures for their
municipal budget in
Germany. By doing so they
are giving citizens an
opportunity to contribute
and discuss their ideas on
how the municipality
should spend its money. As
in nearly all other
countries, so far, there
has been no PB at the
federal or state level in
Germany.
These practices
illustrate the principles
of being open, inclusive,
respectful of
self-expression, timely,
rich in quality
information, sustainable,
and complementary.
On October 10-11, GIFT
Stewards will have the
2017 second meeting. The
meeting objectives are: 1)
to continue and deepen the
exchange on open data,
learning from the
experience of the US
Federal Government in
implementing a model of
budget information
disclosure in open data to
comply with the Open Data
Act; 2) to start a
conversation on the
relevance of transparency
and public participation
in tax policy, convinced
that in order to address
the full range of
opportunities and
trade-offs involved in
budget policymaking it is
paramount to start also
addressing the revenue
side of the fiscal
equation; and finally, 3)
to provide a space for
detailed discussions on
the work of some Stewards
on transparency and
anti-corruption,
addressing granularity
aspects of budget
administrative
classification data, and
the Information Technology
Working Group work plan.
