GAP Institute published the GAP Municipal Budget Transparency Index 2017

GAP Institute presented at a press conference today the analysis "GAP Municipal Budget Transparency Index 2017". This analysis presents an assessment of budget transparency of municipalities in Kosovo by analyzing the legislation and factual situation with regard to budget transparency and ranking the municipalities on the basis of the best performance.

Berat Thaqi, political analyst at GAP Institute, emphasized that the Municipal Budget Transparency Index 2017 assesses and ranks municipalities depending on the number of published documents, budget hearings with citizens and budget documents sent to GAP Institute in response to requests for access to budget documents. In addition to assessing the budget transparency, this analysis includes data from a survey conducted with citizens regarding their knowledge of the local budget. According to the findings, about 81% of citizens did not participate in any public gathering organized by the municipality in the last 12 months, while half are not informed that the municipality has an obligation to organize public hearings with citizens regarding the budget.

Blendi Hasaj, a researcher at GAP Institute, explained the methodology and findings of the GAP Municipal Budget Transparency Index. He explained that a municipality can get the maximum points in this index only if it has published on website, on the Excel format, all budget documents related to the 2016 budget and has organized at least four budget hearings. He also explained that GAP did not analyze the quality of the documents published by the municipalities. Also, Hasaj added that the monitoring of the municipal websites lasted until July 2017.

Regarding the findings of the index, Hasaj stressed out that the results show an average level of municipal budget transparency. Out of 34 evaluated municipalities, nearly half of them have collected over 50 points in the index. Nevertheless, more concerning is the fact that 21 municipalities (62%) have not published on their websites or provided, following the request submitted by the GAP Institute, one or more documents that they are required to publish and make accessible to citizens. In most cases, these municipalities did not publish any of the quarterly financial reports, the summary report of the 2016 budget and, in rare cases, any other documents.

At the end, Berat Thaqi emphasized that this index will be published annually by GAP Institute and in addition to the evaluation, this analysis contains concrete recommendations on how to improve budget transparency for each municipality.

Please click Here to read the full analysis.