Open budget index

Only 24 countries have acceptable levels of budget transparency, according to the latest “open budget index” from the International Budget Partnership, an advocacy group. The index, which is based on 109 questions, measures the amount, level of detail, and timeliness of budget information that is publicly available in 102 countries. The remaining 78 countries (which account for 68% of the world’s population) provided “insufficient” information; 17 of these provided scant or no budget information. Although transparency has improved since the last survey in 2012, thanks largely to improvements made by countries at the bottom of the index, the average score is still only 45 out of a maximum of 100.