OPEN AND TRANSPARENT BUDGET PROCESS IN WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

Budget openness and transparency are key elements of the effective management of public finances, determining the fiscal risks, rational financial decision-making, increasing accountability by policy makers and improving fiscal policies. It is difficult to define budget transparency, and also its measurement is an exceptional challenge. This is because different researchers / institutions use different ways (mostly questionnaires or surveys) to measure the fiscal transparency. Our research is mainly focused on elaborating the openness of budget processes in Western Balkan countries (as a specific group of countries consisted of: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia) dominantly based on a globally accepted methodology designed by Open Budget Partnership (Open Budget Index and Open Budget Survey Tracker), and partly on our own analysis.