Assessment of Budget Transparency in 2023

Conclusions

1. Ensuring budget transparency involves:

• timely, accurate, and complete disclosure by chief spending units (CSUs) of budget documents and the information contained therein;

• publication of payment orders on the Unified Web Portal for Public Funds Usage (E-data);

• establishing logical consistency between budget documents at different stages of the budget process.

2. There is a need to develop a system for monitoring and evaluating the level of budget transparency and for calculating a budget transparency index. To achieve this, a Methodology for assessing budget transparency and information accessibility has been developed.

3. The study was conducted in several stages:

• I – development of the assessment methodology;

• II – data collection from official CSU websites;

• III – collection of Treasury payment orders for each budget program across all participants in the budget process, and calculation of the 2023 budget transparency index;

• IV – comprehensive analysis and assessment of CSU budget transparency for 2023.

4. The methodology assesses two aspects of budget transparency:

• I – assessment of CSU transparency and accessibility across 56 criteria (questions). Each criterion corresponds to a stage of the budget process and a generalized transparency parameter. The assessment identifies which stages are most and least transparent. This includes:

  • evaluation of budget documentation (analysis of preparation, submission, and publication of five key documents: budget requests, budget program passports, amendments, implementation reports, and performance evaluations);

  • assessment of accessibility of budget information to the public;

• II – assessment of the budget transparency index, measuring the share of expenditures for which payment orders are published on the E-data portal.

5. Using the methodology, the following were assessed:

• the level of budget transparency of 49 CSUs, based on analysis of 342 budget programs (113 of which were amended). The assessment covered all budget documents published in 2023 in accordance with the Budget Code, including: budget requests for 2024–2026; budget program passports and amendments for 2023; implementation reports for 2022; and performance evaluations for 2022. The assessment excluded:

  • institutions in the security and defense sector;

  • regional state administrations;

  • the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities;

  • the High Court on Intellectual Property;

  • nationwide expenditures and lending;

• the budget transparency index of 100 spending units.

6. Key findings for 2023:

• 49% of CSUs demonstrated a satisfactory level of transparency;

• the Ministry for Veterans Affairs of Ukraine showed a non-transparent budget (8 points or 14%);

• the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine demonstrated a high level of transparency (51.8 points or 93%);

• the average level of publication of budget documents was 83%;

• only budget requests for 2024–2026 were published in full (100%);

• most CSUs partially published budget program passports (71 out of 88%);

• most CSUs partially published amendments to passports (60 out of 80%);

• implementation reports were published at a level of 86% (42 CSUs);

• the weakest area was performance evaluations, published fully or partially by only 63% (31 CSUs);

• 76% of CSUs had budget sections on their websites filled by more than 50%;

• the highest transparency levels were observed at the drafting (58%) and approval (64%) stages of the state budget;

• the lowest level (39%) was observed at the reporting stage;

• 82% of CSUs did not comply with deadlines for publishing documents;

• accessibility of data for automated processing was low (20%);

• completeness of information was relatively high (71%), and compliance with required formats was 68%;

• 36% of spending units fully published payment transactions on E-data;

• 86% published over 90% of their transactions on E-data; the overall transparency index was 0.9;

• 6% of spending units had non-transparent budgets, including four institutions that did not publish any payment orders: the State Judicial Administration of Ukraine, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the State Space Agency of Ukraine, and the State Bureau of Investigation;

• the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Justice also demonstrated non-transparent budgets, publishing payment orders covering only up to 15% of their expenditures (excluding certain categories).