PRO Business MS

According to the Report, two aspects are evaluated – documents related to the national budget, concluded contracts and concession licenses.

The 2022 report evaluates whether governments make budget documents public, including expenditures broken down by individual budget users, as well as revenues according to their sources. The assessment also includes whether an external audit was performed in accordance with international standards for independent audit of financial statements, as well as whether it is publicly available. Furthermore, the report assesses whether the licensing process for concessions and government contracts complies with laws and regulations and whether they are publicly available.

Of the 141 countries that qualify for US foreign aid, according to the State Department’s evaluation, only half of the countries have met the conditions, such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, and Croatia. and Slovenia, as well as the countries of the Western Balkans region.
Over the past few years, significant steps have been taken by our government to raise fiscal transparency. Several mechanisms and tools have been established to increase fiscal transparency, including the Citizens’ Budget, the Open Finances platform, the Calendar of Tax Changes and the Fiscal Counter which, on a daily basis, provides an overview of the budget’s revenues and expenditures, the realization of capital expenditures, and monthly the realization of the national debt. Also, with the new systemic legal solutions, such as the Budget Law and the amendments to the Law on Financing of Local Self-Government Units, additional solutions are being adopted that will continue to improve fiscal transparency in the country.