Friday 11 September 2015

KENYA FAILS TO IMPRESS IN GLOBAL TRANSPARENCY SURVEY



Kenya has fallen short on the Global Transparency Index, according to a new independent global survey.

The International Budget Partnership’s Open Budget Survey 2015 says this is an indication that the government is denying citizens the information needed to understand and influence the use of public money.

Assessing 102 countries around the world, the 2015 Survey finds that Kenya has yet to
improve enough to move out of the middle category on the Open Budget Index OBI,
which uses internationally recognized criteria to give each country a transparency score
on a 100-point scale.

'For a country to be found to be providing the public with sufficient information, it needs to score above 60 on the OBI,' Economist Kenneth Waithiru form the National Treasury exclusively told Baraka FM.

Kenya’s OBI score of 48 out of 100 means that the government makes limited budget information publicly available,it does not provide citizens with sufficient information to fully understand the budget and hold the government to account.
'Tax payers have a constitutional right to know how their funds are being utilized,' explains John Mutua, a Head of the Programme on Public Finance Management at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which conducted the research for Kenya.

Kenya has placed in the middle category in the last four rounds of the Open Budget Survey because the
government is not publishing sufficient details in the documents it makes publicly available.

“Kenya is still weak in providing the public with opportunities to engage in the budget
process thus raising concerns about the lack of progress on improving transparency,”insists Mutua.

Mutua told Baraka FM that it is also worth noting that budget oversight by the national assembly is still limited.
' We have not really performed badly.We are not there yet and more still needs to be done in as far as budgetary transparency is concerned,' concludes Waithiru.

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