In the morning of October 18, 2022, in Hanoi, Viet Nam Centre for Economic and Strategic Studies (VESS), in collaboration with the Center for Development and Integration (CDI), held a Launch of the Ministry Open Budget Index (MOBI) 2021. The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) ranked third out of 44 Ministries and central agencies in terms of budget transparency.
Overview of the Launch.
MOBI 2021 reflects the results of the fourth annual survey on the levels of budget transparency of 44 Ministries and central agencies based on the provisions of the 2015 Law on State Budget, Circular No. 61/2017/TT-BTC, Circular No. 90/2018/TT-BTC, the Law on Access to Information. According to the MOBI 2021 survey results, the general level of budget transparency among the Ministries and central agencies has improved compared with MOBI 2020. The Ministry of Finance assumed the highest rank and is the only one with the full openness rating, followed by Vietnam Television and the SBV.
On the convenience of budget documents, the SBV, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs are the agencies that had published the relevant documents in the most convenient format (MS Excel files), which are easy to access and use.
On the availability of budget documents, the MOBI 2021 survey results showed that several Ministries and central agencies had not fully made their budget documents publicly available as required.
The MOBI 2021 survey results also demonstrated that the timeliness in the disclosure of budget documents had improved slightly but not significantly.
On the completeness of budget documents, the Ministry of Finance, Vietnam Television and the State Bank of Vietnam were the top ranking agencies.
Based on the MOBI 2021 survey results and the analysis of the current gaps, the Research Panel recommended 4 possible measures for the Ministries and central agencies to fulfill the requirements of law regarding budget document transparency, focusing on:
Publicizing on a timely manner all authorized budget documents in the budget transparency column on the web portals of the respective Ministries and central agencies;
The budget documents must be publicized fully in terms of contents, at the minimum in accordance with the required forms and templates;
The budget documents containing figures should be in user-friendly formats (such as MS Word, MS Excel, etc.);
The budget documents must be publicized together with the relevant Decisions on information disclosure of the competent authority.
LK