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Monitoring Report On The Transparency And Accountability Of The Budget Users

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The Center for Economic Analyses (CEA) and the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” -Skopje (IDSCS) conducted monitoring of the transparency and accountability of the budget users. The monitoring was conducted in May and June 2014 and measured: 1) Public money transparency – publicly shared information on the programs and budget of the budget users and 2) Accountability of results – procedures for accountability and performance measurement, i.e. Performance of the budget users.
The questionnaire, based on which the monitoring of the Internet transparency of the institutions was measured, was comprised of 32 questions out of which 17 were taken from the OBI Open budget questionnaire and adjusted to the Macedonian context.  The answers of the questions were scored with 0 to 2 points, except for the last question which was scored with 0 to 5 points, and the maximum total points of the questionnaire are 67.
In the part of Public money transparency, the findings are based on monitoring of 60, out of a total of 91, budget users (66% of all budget users).

The analysis of the results by institutions demonstrated that none of the 60 monitored budget users, i.e. state institutions, can be assessed as budget transparent.
–    The only positive example for transparency of audit results is the State Audit Office itself;
–    The only positive example for transparency of the monthly budget reports is the Health Insurance Fund;
–    The Directorate for Personal Data Protection is a positive example of an institution that has published all annual reports starting from its establishment;
–    Only 2% of the monitored state institutions have published the current budget on their Internet sites;
–    90% of the institutions do not publish their final annual budget statements;
–    None of the institutions include output indicators for their expenditure budget programs;
–    Only 13,3% of institutions publish annual or semi-annual reports on the execution of budget programs;
–    39,17% of the institutions do not publish any explanation for the difference between the projected and implemented expenditures;
–    71,67% of the institutions do not publish the strategic plan, and 78% do not publish the work program for the current year;
–    None of the institutions that publish the budget, does not publish a budget in a simplified form, intelligible to citizens, as an example Citizens budget.
–    None of the institutions has achieved a positive assessment for budget transparency for even half of the indicators, however compared among all institutions, the most budget transparent institution is the Agency for the fulfillment of rights of communities – 38% transparency, followed by the “Health Insurance fund of Macedonia” – degree of budget transparency of 34% and the Commission for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information – degree of budget transparency of 30%.
In the part of Accountability of results – procedures for accountability and performance measurement, i.e. performance of the budget users, 32 institutions were interviewed/surveyed, i.e. 35% of 91 budget users and it was determined that:
–     Only 21,9% of institutions use prescribed methodology for evaluation of the achieved program outputs;
–    Only 34,4% of institutions have linked their annual final budget statements with output and outcome indicators of relevant programs;
–    28,1% of the interviewed officials believe that there is a shortage of human resources for the preparation of budgets;
–    A total of 90,6% of the interviewed officials answered that they do not have an employee training program for new ways of budget presentation;
–    31,3% of the state officials have not heard of performance based budgeting, while 50% have heard about it but do not know exactly what it is.

The whole monitoring report can be found on the following links: mk en
The monitoring was conducted within the project “Enhancing Transparency and Accountability through Performance Budgeting” which is implemented by CEA and IDSCS, and is funded by the European Union. The aim of the project is to promote budget transparency for accountable use of public finances.
For more information about the project, please contact Marjan Nikolov on email: info@cea.org.mk or visit the websites www.cea.org.mk and www.idscs.org.mk.

This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the Center for Economic Analysis and the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” – Skopje and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.

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