What will public finance look like in the year 2040? This publication presents four stories that imagine the role of fiscal transparency and accountability two decades from now.
By Oct 25, 2018
Reasons that inform public policy must have certain qualities that make them intelligible to others. This paper, part of the International Budget Partnership’s Assessing Budget Credibility project, offers a set of criteria for judging both retrospective and prospective reasons governments give for budget choices and deviations in public budget documents.
By Oct 24, 2018
The agriculture, forestry, plantation, and marine fisheries sectors provide livelihoods for a significant fraction of the Indonesian population, yet contribute less than one out of every ten dollars of revenue received by provincial and national governments. Two Indonesian civil society organizations – Perkumpulan Inisiatif and Seknas FITRA – both with a strong background in budget analysis and advocacy – set out to understand the reasons why these sectors generate so little revenue and to develop strategies for improving governance and ensuring that local communities receive an appropriate share of the benefits from economic activity in these sectors.
By Sep 05, 2018
Kenya’s Public Finance Management Act requires counties to develop an Annual Development Plan (ADP), which, along with the County’s 5-year County Integrated Development Plan (CIDP), becomes the basis for the County’s annual budget. This guide explains how to read and use an Annual Development Plan for budget analysis and advocacy.
By Aug 03, 2018
In Kenya, national and county government are required to produce budget implementation reports that provide information on performance on revenue and expenditure. This information can be used to inform decision making for future budgets to improve the revenue collection and impact of government expenditure. This analysis of publicly available budget implementation reports from Kenya’s national and county governments shows that certain key sets of information is missing.
By Jul 16, 2018
This paper compiles raw expenditure and revenue outturn data for 74 countries using the most recent publicly available Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) reports. The analysis finds that, on average, aggregate spending projections are more credible than aggregate revenue projections; however, the average results hide great variation among countries. The analysis also examines explanations provided for budget deviations in PEFA reports and finds many explanations given are not sufficient.
By Jul 16, 2018
This paper approaches the issue of budget credibility from a transparency perspective, looking at the extent to which budget execution reports (In-Year Reports, Mid-Year Reviews and Year-End Reports) include detailed information comparing final outturns to original budgeted amounts for expenditure and revenue, and explanations for any significant deviations. The analysis focuses on publicly available budget documents collected through the Open Budget Survey for 24 countries. The majority of countries analyzed do provide budget credibility data – in particular in Year-End Reports – but analysis and explanations of deviations are a lot less common.
By Jun 07, 2018
This paper provides a guide to assessing a country’s overall framework for establishing, reporting on, and evaluating tax expenditures using criteria that characterizes a good tax system: transparency, accountability, equity, efficiency, and adequacy.
By Jun 07, 2018
This guide provides an introduction to approaches that can be used to develop a research and advocacy plan for those who are new to analyzing taxes and tax expenditures in Latin America. It focuses on how to define the problem you wish to research and the sources of information that can be used to understand and develop possible solutions.
By Jun 07, 2018
Taxation is an important policy tool for promoting revenue mobilization and economic development. However, it also has important implications in terms of inequality. In countries where inequality is increasing, the redistributive role of taxation has appeared as a central element of policy discussions and research analyses. This paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the case of Latin America. It describes the evolution of taxation and its redistributive implications for the region over the last few decades.
By Jun 07, 2018
This paper explores one aspect of tax policy — tax expenditures — and its impact on inequality in Latin America. Tax expenditures are provisions that reduce the amount of tax that is paid by providing special treatment to a particular class of individual, industry, or activity. They can impact inequality directly, by giving preference to certain groups over others, or indirectly, by reducing the revenues available for redistributive spending. Tax expenditures are significant in the Latin American context because of the magnitude of the revenue loss they cause and the resulting impact on public spending.
