Citizen’s Budget

Posted on
Serbia
June 2012 - February 2013

BIRN Serbia – past programme

BIRN Serbia’s Citizen’s Budget initiative aims to produce a guide to the Serbian budget for the country’s citizens. The BIRN team intends to make a link between revenue raised, expenditures, and outcomes in public services as part of an effort to increase efficiency and strengthen the accountability of the Serbian government’s budgeting process.

Summary

This project, which will run from June 2012-February 2013, will take an innovative approach to communicating macroeconomic policy and public financial management to the people of Serbia and various interest groups. It also aims to provide know-how to the Ministry of Finance and set the groundwork for creating a sustainable framework for communicating the budget to the people of Serbia.

As part of the citizen’s budget project, BIRN Serbia will discuss the government’s budgeting and financial management practices at meetings with the Ministry of Finance in an effort to thoroughly understand the budget process and the policy decisions taken by the government. Project participants will also discuss spending strategy with the Finance Ministry to get an understanding of specific spending plans, to make the link from expenditure to public service outcomes and to establish the geographical distribution of spending.

The team will analyse revenue sources to get a sense of the distributional impact of taxation in the Republic of Serbia (eg. proportional impact on families, households, the employed, the unemployed, businesses etc).

As part of the project, BIRN Serbia will group budget allocations to government ministries into meaningful categories of expenditure (eg. health, education, housing, welfare etc) to communicate spending more effectively to the public. The team will also analyse the government’s fiscal position, including the current deficit, debt management framework and reform program and discuss economic growth prospects with the Fiscal Council. In addition, the project will analyse government financial data to enable comparisons to be drawn with EU averages.

The Citizen’s Budget project will organise a series of consultative meetings with experts in different fields for the purpose of data gathering, especially in terms of the impact of budget allocations.

The results of the project will be translated into a prototype Citizen’s Budget which presents information and data in an easy to understand way, making the budget both tangible and meaningful to the citizens of Serbia. A light-touch framework will be created which enables the Citizen’s Budget to be updated with ease at successive fiscal events.

BIRN Serbia will also organise focus-groups with different stakeholders in order to get their feedback on the proposed concept, the information presented, the way in which it is presented and how it relates to their interests.

The team intends to secure a buy-in from the Finance Ministry through consultation and training to continue to follow this good practice.

The final product of this Citizen’s Budget initiative will include the publication of the Citizen’s Budget Guide, and its promotion in the Parliament, followed by a public outreach campaign.

The target audience for the Citizen’s Budget project is both the general public and the Government of Serbia. The project budget stands at 30,000 euros; it is supported by USAID Business Enabling Project.

Information Sheet

Main Objective:
  • To produce a Citizen’s Budget Guide for the Republic of Serbia which aims to make the link between revenue raised, expenditure on and outcomes in public services to both increase efficiency and strengthen accountability of the GoS’s budgeting process.

Specific Objectives:

  • To take an innovative approach to communicating macroeconomic policy and public financial management to the people of Serbia and various interest groups.
  • To provide know-how to the Ministry of Finance and set the ground for creating a sustainable framework for communicating the budget to the people of Serbia.

Main Activities:

  • To discuss the GoS budgeting and financial management practices through meetings with MFIN to thoroughly understand the budget process and the policy decisions taken by the Government.
  • To analyse revenue sources to get a sense of the distributional impact of taxation in the Republic of Serbia (eg. proportional impact on families, households, the employed, the unemployed, businesses etc).
  • To group budget allocations to the government ministries into meaningful categories of expenditure (eg. Health, education, housing, welfare etc) to communicate spending more effectively to the public.
  • To discuss spending strategy with MFIN to get an understanding of specific spending plans, to make the link from expenditure to public service outcomes and to get a sense of the geographical distribution of spending.
  • To analyse the GoS fiscal position, including the current deficit, debt management framework and reform program and to discuss the economic growth prospect with the Fiscal Council.
  • To analyse GoS financial data to enable comparisons to be drawn with EU averages.
  • To organize a series of consultative meetings with experts in different fields for the purpose of data gathering, especially in terms of impact of budget allocations.
  • To translate results into a prototype Citizen’s budget which presents information and data in an easy to understand way making the budget both tangible and meaningful to the citizens of Serbia.
  • Create a light-touch framework which enables the Citizen’s budget to be updated with ease at successive fiscal events.
  • To organize focus-groups with different stakeholders in order to get their feedback on proposed concept, information presented, the way in which it is presented and how it relates to their interests.
  • Secure buy-in from the MFIN through consultation and training to continue to follow this good practice.
  • Editing, design and printing the Citizens Budget Guide.
  • Promote the Citizen’s budget in the Parliament, followed by the public outreach campaign.

Target Groups:

  • Government of Serbia
  • Expert community
  • General public