Average budget transparency by local government units in Croatia is improving each year, and in 2021 it  stands at 4.5 out of a maximum 5, but 14% of cities and municipalities still fail to meet legal obligations to publish three essential budget documents, the IJF  institute said on Monday.

The Institute of Public Finance (IJF) today presented the results of a seventh cycle of its surveys of the transparency of local government budgets.

The overall average level of budget transparency in Croatian local government units is expressed as the number of budget documents published on their respective official websites.

For several years, this institute has conducted analyses of budget transparency in all Croatian counties, cities and municipalities. Budget transparency implies providing an insight into complete, accurate, timely and understandable information regarding the budget. For the purpose of this study, budget transparency is measured as the number of key budget documents published on the official websites of Croatian local governments, says the institute.

The latest study was conducted between November 2020 and April 2021 with the intention of observing the timely publication of five documents – annual execution of the 2019 budget, semi-annual execution of the 2020 budget, 2021 budget proposal, adopted 2021 budget and citizens’ budget for 2021.

The level of transparency ranged from zero (not publishing even one document) to five (publishing all the five documents).

Branko Stanic from IJF underscored that average budget transparency by municipalities, cities and counties improved this year so that 576 local government units scored 4.5 whereas in 2015 that score was 1.8.

In 2021 all counties published all the five key budget documents whereas in 2015 the average was 3.9 for counties.

Municipalities and cities, however, scored an average of 4.45 this year compared to 1.67 in 2015.

According to the results, 77% of the cities and 62% of the municipalities published all five documents.

Fourteen percent of local government units do not act in accordance with the law and do not publish the crucial documents – annual budget documents, the survey showed.