Georgia Ranked 5th in Open Budget Index Rankings

Georgia rose to 5th place in the Open Budget Index Rankings 2017 recently released by the International Budget Partnership. This achievement is a credit to the Government of Georgia, to which we offer our warmest congratulations. PMCG, together with its project partners, has certainly made a notable contribution in this regard, by participating in various projects in the fields of public financial management (PFM) and good governance development, in the projects such as the USAID Good Governance Initiative, the Department for International Development’s (DFID) Good Governance Fund, and public financial management programs funded by the European Union.

The Open Budget Index is an independent, comparative measure of central government budget transparency. The Index assigns countries covered by the Open Budget Survey a transparency score on a 100-point scale using a subset of questions that assess the quantity, quality and punctuality of budget information that governments make publicly available in eight key budget documents in accordance with international good practice standards.

With 82 points from 100, Georgia occupies 5th place behind Norway (85), Sweden (87) and joint leaders New Zealand and South Africa (both 89). This score and ranking reflects the great progress made by Georgia providing sufficient budget information to enable the public to engage in budget discussion in an informed manner. Indeed, in only two years Georgia has climbed 11 places in the rankings, and improved its score by 16 points (in the 2015 rankings, Georgia sat 16th on 66 points.