Open budgets, transform lives: the Open Budget Survey 2008

The Open Budget Survey 2008, a comprehensive evaluation of budget transparency in 85 countries, finds that the state of budget transparency around the world is deplorable. This encourages inappropriate, wasteful, and corrupt spending and-because it shuts the public out of decision making-reduces the legitimacy and impact of anti-poverty initiatives. At the same time, the Survey shows that a number of countries have significantly improved their performance over the past two years. It also shows that many more governments could quickly improve budget transparency at low cost by taking publicly available the budget information that they already produce for their donors or internal use.