“The lack of strong budget accountability systems poses a threat to the implementation of critical worldwide agreements such as the UN Sustainable Developments Goals”, Owino said during the launch of the Open Budget Survey 2015.

For a country to be found to be providing the public with sufficient information, it needs to score above 60 on the OBI.

Kenya scored 48 points on a 100 point scale, while Uganda scored 62 points.

The initiative aims to encourage governments to provide opportunities for the public to engage in the budget process, and though the country does relatively well thanks to Treasury’s annual “tips for the budget” campaign and through the National Economic development and Labour Council (Nedlac), the survey finds that these mechanisms are not enough to ensure broad based and effective participation.

Mr Mataitawakilai said Government could improve this through continuing public engagements in budgeting, feedback on public submissions that had been received and how they were being implemented.

The report, the fifth of its kind, was the comparative survey of budget transparency, citizen participation, and independent oversight institutions in the budgeting process.

“Although the Fiji Government has increased the amount of budget information available to the public, the survey further reveals that Fiji still ranks among the world’s worst on budget transparency”, the survey said.

The report calls on the government to improve transparency, participation and oversight in order to climb up in the index.

The Open Budget Index released today measures the transparency of national budgets by looking into three main areas, namely the level of budget transparency, the degree of public participation, and the strength of the oversight institutions in the legislature and government audit body.

Other recommendations include publishing a mid-year review and increasing the comprehensiveness of the year-end report by presenting more details on planned versus actual expenditures and performance.

When it comes to budget oversight by legislature, we only got 15 and out of 100 and it’s considered weak. 17 of these countries provide scant or no budget information to their citizens.

“Measures such as use of program based budgeting helps to improve the level of transparency in budget making process”, Mutua said.

Under Vietnamese laws, the State Audit Office of Vietnam has significant discretion to undertake audits as it sees fit, and has certain independence, considering that its chief can not be removed without legislative or judicial approval, the organization said in its findings.