In 2010, the Institute of Public Finance was measuring budget transparency of 33 Croatian cities. Our goal was to investigate the disclosure of budget information by local units and the openness of local units to the public.
Once accepted, a local budget has an effect on each and every citizen. It is often not in the interest of politicians to have simple, clear and transparent central or local budgets. But to all citizens, however, it should be very important to understand the budgets, and to actively participate in the budgetary process.
The total Croatian Open Local Budget Index average is 65, meaning that the cities provided us with 65% of the expected transparency (measured as disclosure of local budget information and the local units' openness to citizens). The highest-ranked city – Slavonski Brod scored 82, while the lowest-ranked - Šibenik scored 45.
Detailed methodology, surveys, questionnaires and results by city are available in the published report.