This videoconference meeting is bringing together members of the Working Group (WG) on Budget Literacy and Transparency. This WG is comprised of up to 15 member countries in PEMPAL, established by PEMPAL Budget Community of Practice (BCOP) under its Action Plan for FY16. The objective of the WG is to learn from international experience on approaches to raise budget literacy among citizens and to enhance budget openness and accessibility.
During the first half of 2016 the WG has been developing recommendations on overcoming challenges in designing and implementing Citizens’ Budgets in PEMPAL countries. The topic was selected by the WG because Citizens’ Budgets remain a key challenge in many PEMPAL countries. Despite some notable achievements in some countries, in the 2015 PEMPAL survey, only 5 countries participating in the WG reported having Citizens’ Budgets. Results from the 2015 Open Budget Index (OBI) also showed less than half the countries from the PEMPAL region have a Citizens’ Budgets.
Based on the discussions by the WG and a review of international practice and advice that followed, draft recommendations have been developed that were presented for a discussion by WG participants at a VC on September 22, 2016, in order to finalise this PEMPAL knowledge product. This product provides a menu of options for those countries who do not have Citizens' Budgets to break the identified challenges preventing them from advancing this important reform to strengthen budget transparency.
