site.btaBulgaria Retains Budget Transparency Score of 65 Points in Open Budget Survey 2015

Bulgaria Retains Budget Transparency Score  of 65 Points in Open Budget Survey 2015

Sofia, September 9 (BTA) - Bulgaria retained its budget
transparency score of 65 out of 100 points in this year's Open
Budget Survey (OBS), thus remaining in the group of countries
with a significant level of budget transparency. The previous
OBS was released in 2012, economist and Industry Watch managing
partner Luchezar Bogdanov told a BTA-hosted news conference
Wednesday.

Bogdanov explained that the International Budget Partnership's
Open Budget Survey is the world's only independent, comparable
measure of budget transparency. The OBS 2015 examines 102
countries from around the world, measuring three aspects of how
governments are managing public finances: budget transparency,
public participation and oversight. Each country is given a
score between 0 and 100 that determines its ranking on the Open
Budget Index.

Only 24 countries, including Bulgaria, have a budget
transparency score over 60, meaning that the Government provides
 the public with substantial budget information. The leading
countries in the Open Budget Index 2015 are New Zealand and
Sweden, Bogdanov said.

Bulgaria's budget transparency score has improved significantly
compared to the first Open Budget Index published in 2006: from
47 to 65 points, he went on to say. For the first time since
2006 Bulgaria has made available to the public all eight key
budget documents that the international standards and practices
identify as necessary to allow the civil society and the public
to monitor and influence budget decisions. However, some of
these documents do not offer enough information, he noted.

Bulgaria gets a score of 38 for public participation, meaning
that the Government provides the public with weak opportunities
to engage in the budget process. As for public oversight, the
survey on Bulgaria reads that oversight by the legislature is
weak (39 points), and oversight by the supreme audit institution
 is adequate (84 points).
      
The survey recommends that Bulgaria prioritize the following
actions to improve budget transparency: "increase the
comprehensiveness of the Executive's Budget Proposal by
presenting more information on sensitivity analysis on how
alternative scenarios of different macroeconomic variables could
 affect the budget and on extra-budgetary funds; increase the
comprehensiveness of the Year-End Report by presenting more
information on planned versus actual debt and interest and on
planned versus actual performance; and increase the
comprehensiveness of the Citizens Budget and Mid-Year Review."

To improve budget participation, Bulgaria is advised to:
"establish credible and effective mechanisms (i.e. public
hearings, surveys, focus groups) for capturing a range of public
 perspectives on budget matters; provide detailed feedback on
how public perspectives have been captured and taken into
account; and establish formal mechanisms for the public to
assist the supreme audit institution to formulate its audit
program and participate in audit investigations."

To improve public oversight, Bulgaria should "establish a
specialized budget research office for the legislature and, in
both law and practice, ensure the legislature is consulted prior
 to the virement of funds in the Enacted Budget and the spending
 of contingency funds that were not identified in the Enacted
Budget."