Publications
Partners
National Treasury has welcomed the Fiscal Transparency Evaluation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which revealed that South Africa has a strong record of fiscal transparency, ranking it among the top three countries worldwide.
According to the report, this ranking is as a result of improvements in three areas:
Fiscal reporting: Expand and align fiscal reporting to international best practices by including other spheres of the public sector, strengthening tax expenditure disclosure and improving adherence to audit timelines for published financial statements;
Forecasting and budgeting: Implement precise, time-bound and stable fiscal rules; and
Fiscal risk analysis: Enhance analysis of risks in the fiscal risk statement, publish public-private partnership financial data regularly, consolidate transfers to state-owned companies to show fiscal impact and set limits on government guarantees.
READ: IMF's projection for SA's economic outlook is more optimistic
National Treasury said:
“Work is under way on all these areas. Government is committed to addressing these areas to enhance fiscal credibility and ensure continued transparency and accountability in the management of public finances."
In the report, the IMF indicated that the country had scored well in the Open Budget Index and was now ranked second out of 120 countries surveyed, compared with 14 out of 100 in 2021.
READ: ‘You know your party has a looting problem’ – Steenhuisen to Ramaphosa
Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt explained that there has been fiscal transparency since before democratic South Africa. South Africans should be proud on the presentation of budget reports and that, despite the money being misspent, people are able to access them.
"We know that the Auditor-General has a major issue about a lot of money that is being spent, misspent, misallocated and that sort of stuff, but that, in a way, is also good news because the Auditor-General's report is also transparent and accessible to everybody," said Roode.
He also said that being ranked in the top three is something that South Africans can be very proud of, and that the transparency of the fiscal accounts at all levels is probably among the best in the world.
