Presentation of the results: Budget transparency of Croatian local governments: November 2022 – April 2023
Place and date: Europe House, Zagreb, July 5, 2023
Presenters:
Sanjin Rukavina, State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice and Public Administration of RC
Danijela Stepić, State Treasurer
Marko Marušić, Head of the Bjelovar-Bilogora County
Željko Kovačević, Head of the Municipality of Donja Motičina
Katarina Ott, Institute of Public Finance
Mihaela Bronić, Institute of Public Finance
Simona Prijaković, Institute of Public Finance
Topic: Presentation of the results of the new research cycle within the project Does Transparency pay-off? The political and socio-economic impacts of local government budget transparency in Croatia (IMPACTBT), funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.
Content: The level of budget transparency of all 576 Croatian local government units (counties, cities and municipalities) in the period November 2022 – April 2023 was presented. All local government units' overall average level of budget transparency, expressed as the number of budget documents published on their respective official websites, stands at 4.6 (out of a maximum 5). Nineteen out of twenty counties published all 5 requested documents, while cities published an average of 4.83 and municipalities 4.55 documents. However, one county, 19 cities and 99 municipalities still do not publish all four documents for which there is a legal obligation for publication, while one city and 51 municipalities do not publish one document recommended by the Ministry of Finance. One municipality did not publish any budget documents. Although publishing key budget documents does not guarantee absolute transparency, it is considered the initial step toward higher levels essential for citizens’ participation in budgetary processes and control over the collection and spending of public funds. After eleven years of local budget transparency research, since the majority of local government units publish all five key documents - which was our goal - we are ending this research in this form (with this methodology), hoping that budget transparency will continue to improve and enable citizens to understand local budgets and decide on them.
The Institute awarded the top-rated local governments. The detailed analysis is available in the IPF Notes Budget Transparency in Croatian Counties, Cities and Municipalities: November 2022 – April 2023 and in the interactive map.
Place and date: Online presentation, June 29, 2022
Presenters:
Zdravko Zrinušić, State Secretary, Ministry of Finance
Sanjin Rukavina, State Secretary, Ministry of Justice and Public Administration
Mihael Jurić, Deputy Head of Sisak-moslavina County
Anamarija Blažević, Mayor of the City of Pakrac
Dino Blažević, Head of the Municipality of Ribnik
Vjekoslav Bratić, Director of the Institute of Public Finance
Branko Stanić, Researcher at the Institute of Public Finance
Topic: Presentation of the results of the new research cycle within the project "Does transparency pay-off? The political and socio-economic impacts of local government budget transparency in Croatia (IMPACTBT)“, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.
Content: Institute of Public Finance presented the level of budget transparency of all 576 Croatian local government units (counties, cities and municipalities) in the period November 2021 – April 2022, which was expressed as the number of budget documents published on their official websites, averages 4.5 (out of a maximum 5). All counties published all 5 requested documents, while cities published an average of 4.73 documents, and municipalities an average of 4.36 documents. However, 19 cities and 92 municipalities still do not publish all three documents for which there is a legal obligation for publication, while 14 cities and 124 municipalities do not publish the two documents recommended by the Ministry of Finance. Two municipalities did not publish any budget documents. Although the publishing of key budget documents does not, in itself, guarantee absolute budget transparency, nor the absolute responsibility of local governments’ leadership, it is considered the initial step toward higher transparency levels necessary for citizens’ participation in the budgetary process and control over the collection and spending of public funds.
Place and date: virtual conference, October 22, 2021
Topic: Does fiscal openness pay off? The political and socio-economic effects of transparency, participation and accountability
Opening speeches:
Sonja Schirmbeck, Director, Friedrich Ebert Foundation Regional Office Croatia
Hana Huzjak, Senior Economic Adviser, European Commission Representation in the Republic of Croatia
Warren Krafchik, Director, International Budget Partnership, Washington
Stipe Župan, State Secretary, Ministry of Finance
Vjekoslav Bratić, Director, Institute of Public Finance
Mihaela Bronić, Researcher, Institute of Public Finance
Content: The Institute of Public Finance and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung organized the Public Sector Economics 2021 Conference – Does fiscal openness pay off? The political and socio-economic effects of transparency, participation and accountability. It addressed the current state, trends and challenges in fiscal openness internationally, nationally and subnationally. The main goal was to provide a state-of-the-art theoretical, empirical, and policy insights on the effects of fiscal transparency, participation and accountability on macro-fiscal, resource allocation, service delivery, governance, and development outcomes.
Keynote speeches:
James Alt, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, USA
María-Dolores Guillamón, University of Murcia, Spain
Paulo Jorge Reis Mourão, University of Minho, Portugal
In panel discussion on the future directions for research on the impacts of fiscal openness participated:
Paolo de Renzio, Stanford University
Joachim Wehner, London School of Economics and Political Science
Claudio Ferraz, UBC and PUC-Rio
Stuti Khemani, World Bank
Adil Ababou, Gates Foundation
Recording of the conference as well as presentations are available
online.
Sanjin Rukavina, State Secretary at Ministry of Justice and Public Administration