site.btaGlobal Survey Names Bulgaria among Countries Where Public Receives Significant Amount of Budget Information

Bulgaria has retained its position in the group of countries whose governments provide a significant amount of budget information to the public. Bulgaria's budget transparency score has increased slightly to 79 points, the Institute for Market Economics said on Wednesday, covering the Open Budget Survey 2023 published by the Washington-headquartered International Budget Partnership. The report covers 125 countries of the world.

Two other indices in the survey show that the country's mechanisms for public participation in the budget process (26 pts) and budget oversight by the legislature (54 pts) are not effective enough.

The fact that Bulgarian citizens receive a significant amount of budget information puts the country in the second-best-performing group of nations in the budget transparency index scoring between 60 and 80 pts out of a maximum of 100, and around the average ranking of the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Since 2006, when the first budget transparency index was published, the assessment for Bulgaria has improved considerably from 47 pts in 2006 to 66 in 2017 to 71 in 2019 and 2021.

The highest-ranked nations in terms of transparency, where the government provides the public with "extensive information" about the budget, include South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, Mexico and Norway as well as two countries in close proximity to Bulgaria - Georgia and Moldova.

Bulgaria provides a significant amount of budget information through its medium-term fiscal framework, the drafts of the state budget, budget-related documents, and monthly and annual reports on the implementation of the budget and the level of the government debt. A positive development in recent years has been the publishing of "budgets for the citizens", which present essential information about the budget process in concise and easy-to-understand language.

The best budget transparency practices are reported in South Korea, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The above-mentioned score of 54 pts in the oversight index puts Bulgaria among the countries with adequate mechanisms for public finances accountability and control. The leaders in this index are Norway, South Korea and Czechia.