Empowering Citizens through Budget Transparency in the North-West and Adamawa Regions
Citizens often lack information on the use of public funds. They are usually left out of allocation decisions and do not have opportuni¬ties to provide adequate and timely feedback on the use of scarce resources. Transparency in budgetary processes...
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/19909105/cameroon-budget-transparency-initiative-empowering-citizens-through-budget-transparency-north-west-adamawa-regions http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20131 |
| Summary: | Citizens often lack information on
the use of public funds. They are usually left out of
allocation decisions and do not have opportuni¬ties to
provide adequate and timely feedback on the use of scarce
resources. Transparency in budgetary processes reduces
opportu¬nities for wasteful and corrupt spending. As a
consequence, and because it can increase trust in
authorities and lead to enhanced tax collections, budget
transparency could increase resources avail¬able to fight
poverty. Therefore, with support from the World Bank, two
regions in Cameroon (the North-West and Adamawa) piloted an
initiative to promote greater budget transparency with three
objectives: simplification, analysis, and disclosure of
budgets at multiple levels (national, regional, divisional,
municipal, school, and health center); awareness and
capacity-building of government officials and local/regional
institutions to promote public dialogue about public
expenditures by encouraging demand-side governance; and
documentation and dissemination of activities. In both the
regions, steering committees under the chairman¬ship of
their governors spearheaded and coordinated the activities
under the initiative. Two local nongovernmental
organizations with expertise in social accountability
approaches facilitated the community mobilization and budget
dissemination process. |
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