The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report had already ranked the Fernandez administration as tops in the world in government wasteful spending. Now, a just-released Open Budget Survey conducted in 2010 again questions transparency in the PLD administration.
The Dominican Republic is ranked second from last compared to its Central American neighbors in the just-released Open Budget Survey 2010 by the International Budget Partnership. The scores for 92 questions are used to compile objective scores and rankings of the relative transparency of each country’s budget process. The poll reviews the status of transparency during the past PLD administration of former President Leonel Fernandez. New President Danilo Medina is challenged with reverting the widespread political patronage and corruption within the same PLD administration.
For the survey, the Dominican Republic’s score of 14 out of 100 is one-third the average score (42) for the 94 countries surveyed. The score indicates that the government provides the public with scant information on the central government’s budget and financial activities assessed by the survey. The report highlights that this makes it virtually impossible for citizens to hold the government accountable for its management of the public’s money.
The report recommends that the government improve the availability and comprehensiveness of key budget documents so that the budget process can be made more open. It mentions that while the pre-budget statement and the Executive Budget Proposal are produced, these are not published. It also is critical that the mid-year review is not produced. It rates the oversight institutions of the legislature and the supreme audit institution (SAI) known in the Dominican Republic as Chamber of Accounts as weak and makes recommendations.
The recommendations include that the Dominican Republic should publish the Executive’s Budget Proposal and Pre-Budget Statement on government websites, produce and publish a concise Citizens’ Budget and a Mid-Year Review, provide opportunities for the public to attend legislative hearings on the budget, and increase the powers of the legislature and SAI to provide more comprehensive oversight of the budget.
http://internationalbudget.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/OBI2010-DominicanRepublic.pdf
Research to complete the country’s Open Budget Survey was undertaken by Fundacion Solidaridad, Av. Francia #40, Altos, Santiago, Dominican Republic. The email is fsolidaridad@gmail.com
The Open Budget Initiative (Initiative) is a global research and advocacy program to promote public access to budget information and the adoption of accountable budget systems.
IBP launched the Initiative with the Open Budget Survey – a comprehensive analysis and survey that evaluates whether governments give the public access to budget information and opportunities to participate in the budget process at the national level. The IBP works with civil society partners in 100 countries to collect the data for the Survey. The Open Budget Survey is conducted biennially and the first was released in 2006.
The budget is a government’s plan for how it is going to use the public’s resources to meet the public’s needs. Transparency means all of a country’s people can access information on how much is allocated to different types of spending, what revenues are collected, and how international donor assistance and other public resources are used. The IBP believes that open budgets are empowering; they allow people to be the judge of whether or not their government officials are good stewards of public funds.
While providing the public with comprehensive and timely information on the government’s budget and financial activities and opportunities to participate in decision making can strengthen oversight and improve policy choices, keeping the process closed can have the opposite effect. Restricting access to information creates opportunities for governments to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending, ultimately reducing the resources available to fight poverty.
Since a significant amount of poverty-reducing expenditures take place at the sub-national level, the Initiative also has initiated a major new effort to support work on budget transparency and accountability at this level.
The Open Budget Initiative works with civil society organizations worldwide to undertake research and advocacy to raise public awareness of the connections between budget transparency and people’s daily lives to mobilize public support for reform.