Publication: Nigeria’s Experience Publishing Budget Allocations : A Practical Tool to Promote Demand for Better Governance
Loading...
Published
2008-10
ISSN
Date
2012-08-13
Editor(s)
Abstract
Since January 2004, the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Finance has taken an initiative to improve transparency at all levels of government, particularly the sub-national level. Every month, it publishes the federal, state, and local government shares of revenue from the country's federal account. From its inception, then Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala led this initiative as one of many efforts to improve public expenditure management, itself part of a broader set of institutional and governance reforms. Nigeria's effort to publish budgets is a leading example of how transparent information is essential to allow citizens to participate effectively in governance, hold authorities to account, and thereby enhance development effectiveness. The intuition behind this burgeoning awareness is clear. Like for other good things, the best governance outcomes result when there is a free flow of information between those supplying government services and those demanding those services.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Songwe, Vera; Francis, Paul; Rossiasco, Paula; O'Neill, Fionnuala; Chase, Rob. 2008. Nigeria’s Experience Publishing Budget Allocations : A Practical Tool to Promote Demand for Better Governance. Social Development Notes. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11138 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The Many Faces of Corruption : Tracking Vulnerabilities at the Sector Level(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)This paper explores the use of prototype road maps to identify corruption vulnerabilities, suggests corresponding warning signals, and proposes operationally useful remedial measures in each of several selected sectors and for a selected sample of cross cutting public sector functions that are particularly prone to corruption and that are critical to sector performance. Numerous technical experts have come together in this effort to develop an operationally useful approach to diagnosing and tackling corruption. The many faces of corruption is an invaluable reference for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers engaged in the business of development.Publication Improving the Quality of Public Expenditure in the Dominican Republic(Washington, DC, 2012)This book addresses the achievements, challenges, and opportunities to improve the quality of public spending. Steps to make such changes have come through monitoring and evaluation approaches that can be replicated or expanded; sectoral efforts to improve the performance of priority programs; Congress's use of information on the results of public spending; the implementation of performance budgeting at subnational levels; and the harmonization of accounting between the three levels of the federal government. All these aspects are key elements of comprehensive reform. Currently, as the book states, accountability focuses on achieving results rather than on centering attention on mere compliance with rules and procedures. In this context, based on a new legal framework, the government of Mexico has decisively promoted results-based management and budgeting. The Performance Evaluation System (SED) was finally established in 2008 with the institution of the principles, concepts, methodologies, guidelines, procedures, and systems that support its operation. Its adoption as a common practice in the Federal Public Administration (APF) process will require a gradual, progressive, systematic learning and continuous improvement that should allow performance evaluation to take root in the APF. This calls for consolidating the Results-Based Budgeting (RBB)-SED in all agencies, expanding its use and improving the quality of the information that feeds it. However, not just the APF benefit will from the implementation of the RBB-SED. As the publication suggests, the approach to an expenditure budget based on performance information offers Congress great opportunities to enhance its regulatory and supervisory functions. The improvement in the quality of Matrices de Indicadores para Resultados (MIRs), program evaluations, and their integration into the budgetary programming cycle also contributes to this purpose.Publication Governance Reform : Bridging Monitoring and Action(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)Governance reform: bridging, monitoring, and action lays out a broad framework for analyzing and monitoring governance in developing countries. It identifies fourteen core indicators for governance monitoring- both broad measures of overall patterns and specific actionable measures that can be used to guide reforms and track progress. The book also summarizes good practices for reforming public bureaucracies and checks and balances institutions (including parliaments, the justice system, media and information, and local governance); highlights improvements in transparency as a relatively low-cost and low-key way of deepening government accountability to civil society; and suggests ways to complement top-down reforms with approaches that focus directly on improving service provision and the investment climate (such as strengthening the bottom-up accountabilities of service providers to communities, firms, and citizens).Publication The Political Economy of Social Accountability in Nepal(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011)The World Bank has introduced a new Program for Accountability in Nepal (PRAN) to enhance the capacities of civil society and government actors to utilize social accountability approaches and tools. This political economy study seeks to inform the PRAN by identifying the strengths and opportunities as well as risks and obstacles for social accountability initiatives in Nepal. It includes recommendations for managing and addressing these issues. The study is based on primary and secondary research conducted from September 2010 to February 2011. The research methodology utilized for this study was three-fold. First, a literature review was undertaken including in-country laws, policies and regulations, as well as a range of studies and articles on issues of relevance to social accountability in Nepal. A bibliography of these materials is attached as annex one. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted with key civil society leaders, non-governmental organization (NGO) staff, journalists, academics, government officials, and citizens. A list of people interviewed and guiding questions are attached as annex two. Third, the research team made field visits to the eastern and western regions of the country to observe social accountability initiatives and interview local stakeholders. In total 75 people were interviewed, including 12 civil society leaders. Focus group discussions with citizens were also conducted in Ilam, Dhankuta, Itahari, and Palpa. The first section of the paper provides a brief historical overview of political development in Nepal, and highlights how these historical legacies influence current day citizen-state relations and accountability relationships. Section two analyzes the legislative and institutional framework for social accountability in Nepal. The third section of the paper analyzes a range of contextual factors influencing social accountability in Nepal. Section four identifies citizen information, citizen voice, and collective action as three key elements of social accountability in Nepal, and discusses current strengths and weaknesses with regard to each of them. Section five of the paper looks at each one of the PRAN's three focal areas - public financial management, municipal governance, and community-based monitoring and evaluation of public services. Finally, section six outlines conclusions and recommendations for promoting social accountability in Nepal.Publication Bangladesh(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-12)Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest and most densely populated countries, and subject to annual cyclones and flooding. Despite these challenges, it benefits from strong economic growth, good performance on health and education, and poverty reduction, alongside weak governance and pervasive corruption. The reasons include strong macroeconomic policy, pro-poor spending, credible elections, export growth and remittances, improved capacity for managing natural disasters, and a stronger civil society than comparable countries. After over a decade of intense engagement with the Bank on governance, Bangladesh adopted in 2006 a governance-oriented Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) with four main objectives: to improve implementation capacity; to 'tackle corruption' by fully operationalizing the Anti-Corruption Commission; to lay the foundation for comprehensive legal and judicial reform; and to strengthen 'voice, empowerment and participation.' The choice of a wide range of instruments and areas of intervention was appropriate, given the political instability at the time of 2006 CAS preparation. The Bank signaled it was ready to engage in all areas, and could scale up or pull back depending on emerging political and bureaucratic commitment. The 2006 CAS yielded mixed results, and the subsequent Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) has been more selective on GAC issues. At the project level, governance has been a key priority, in line with the South Asia region's heavy emphasis on GAC-in-Projects. Investments in GAC-in-primary education, a local government project, anti-corruption efforts in the power sector, and projects strengthening the investment climate have yielded positive results. Investments in GAC-in-roads projects have had mixed results in terms of effectiveness. GAC activities were mainly adopted prior to the 2007 GAC strategy. Although Bangladesh was a Country Governance and Anticorruption (CGAC) country, the country team chose not to use CGAC funds because the country had already been intensively using GAC approaches well before the GAC strategy was adopted.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication The World Bank Group in Georgia, 2014-23(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-30)This Country Program Evaluation assesses the performance and effectiveness of the World Bank Group’s support to Georgia in achieving the country’s development objectives. In the decade leading up to the evaluation period, Georgia pursued economic reforms to attract critical investments for becoming a regional trade and transport hub. Ambitious economic reforms went hand in hand with efforts to improve human development and strengthening social protection systems. Growing geopolitical tensions and internal political polarization have challenged Georgia’s reform progress in recent years. The Bank Group’s strategy adapted well to Georgia’s development needs and was well coordinated with other development partners. It successfully employed a range of instruments to help increase competitiveness, growth, and job creation, and effectively contributed to improved infrastructure and increased trade by using programmatic and innovative approaches. The Bank Group’s regular investments in analytical work and the switch to results-based programmatic support helped improve the efficiency and effectiveness of education and health care systems. The IEG offers the following lessons based on the evidence and analysis in the Country Program Evaluation: (i) Prioritizing Bank Group support around the move towards deeper regional integration was an effective anchor for key economic reforms for economic convergence. (ii) Pursuing a selective and adaptive approach in a country with high implementation capacity and institutions, strong coordination among development partners, and access to a wide range of external resources can allow the Bank Group to exercise significant influence in areas of comparative advantage and global expertise. (iii) A stronger focus on outcome-based programmatic approaches helped to build local capacity and crowd-in partner financing.Publication FY 2025 China Country Opinion Survey Report(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-04)The Country Opinion Survey in China assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in China perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in China on 1) their views regarding the general environment in China; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in China; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in China; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in China.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Malaysia's Economic Growth and Transition to High Income(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)This paper studies economic growth in Malaysia, with the purpose of assessing the potential to attain the status and characteristics of a high-income country. Future economic growth is simulated under a business-as-usual baseline, where the growth drivers follow their historical or recent trends, and under different scenarios of reform, using the World Bank Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM). Under the business-as-usual baseline, Malaysia's GDP growth is expected to decline from 4.5 to 2.0 percent over the next three decades, following the country's transition to high income in 2024 (which might be delayed due to the effects of COVID-19). This decline is partly due to demographics, but also a declining marginal product of private capital and slowing growth rates of total factor productivity and human capital. Strong reforms are required for Malaysia to grow beyond what is expected based on historical trends, especially for human capital, female labor force participation, and total factor productivity. In the strong reform scenario, based on growth drivers achieving a target corresponding to the 75th percentile of high-income countries, GDP growth is expected to have a substantially higher trajectory, reaching 3.6 percent by 2050.Publication The World Bank Group in Tanzania, Fiscal Years 2012–22(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-22)This evaluation assesses the relevance and effectiveness of the World Bank Group's support to Tanzania between Fiscal Years 2012 and 2022. Over the past decade, Tanzania has experienced resilient growth, with an average annual per capita GDP increase of 2.2%. However, poverty remains widespread and slow to decline, underscoring the need for more inclusive growth. The report examines the Bank Group's strategic and operational approaches during this period, which were aligned with Tanzania's development priorities and focused on industrialization, human development, and public sector reforms. The evaluation includes thematic chapters on the Bank Group's support for private sector-led growth and spatial transformation, as well as lessons to inform future support to the country.