Enacted Budget

The Enacted Budget is a document (a budget or appropriation) that is typically approved by the legislature, after debating the executive’s proposed budget. The Enacted Budget provides the baseline information for any analyses conducted during the fiscal year. In other words, it is the starting point for monitoring the execution phase of the budget. In some countries, the Executive’s Budget Proposal varies significantly from the Enacted Budget, so it is important that the content of the two documents is assessed individually. The Enacted Budget grows in importance when it differs significantly from the budget proposal. The Enacted Budget allows one to compare what was proposed by the executive to what the legislature enacted into law.

Assessing the public availability of the EB
Publicly available budget documents are defined as those documents that are published on the website of the public authority issuing the document within the time frame specified in the OBS methodology and that all citizens are able to obtain free of charge. (See the Open Budget Survey Guidelines on Public Availability of Budget Documents.) This is a change from previous rounds of the Open Budget Survey: now at minimum documents must be made available on the Internet and free of charge to be considered publicly available.

The OBS methodology requires that for an EB to be considered publicly available, it must be made available to the public three months after the budget is approved by the legislature. If the EB is not released to the public at least three months after the budget is approved by the legislature, option “d” applies. Option “d” should also be chosen for documents that are produced for internal purposes only (that is, produced but never released to the public) or are not produced at all. Some governments may publish budget documents further in advance than the latest possible dates outlined above. In these instances, researchers should choose options “a” or “b,” depending on the date of publication identified for the EB. See Question EB-2 for more information.

Questions on the EB in the OBS

 * Questions on the EB in the OBS

1) Can we accept information in the citizen version of the EB, which is not in the main document?
For OBS 2019 in the Philippines – the citizens version of the EB is published later than the EB (Expenditure Bill). The main approved bill only has expenditures, but other revenue laws are passed soon after, none of which have total revenue estimates. However, the citizens budget of the EB, which is published within three months of enactment, has approved revenue estimate. In OBS 2019, we will accept the information in the citizen’s versions of the EB for the revenue questions in the EB questions in Section 3.

2) When can we reference EBP annexes in EB questions?
In Nicaragua in OBS 2019, the budget law was approved and published on time but the related annexes were published late. The budget law notes that the “proposal is approved with some small changes included in the Annex of the EB.” Is the reference to the EBP sufficient to consider the EBP documents as part of the EB (given that the amendments are minor and documented in the EB), or do we only reference EBP documents as part of the EB when the EB is approved without change (and our other criteria are met)?

From the point of view of CSOs, the changes referenced are small (only about two pages). Also, all the changes are documented in the EB so we have all that information (we just don’t have the updated annexes because they were published late). The real question is, can we score the related EB questions in Section 3 (such as questions on whether budget information is presented by administrative classification) based on the original EBP annexes?

We voted 6-5 to not accept referencing the original EBP annexes for EB questions. We will consider the EB annexes to be published and neither include these nor the original EBP annexes in our assessment of the EB questions.”

3) When should we use a prior year’s EB in case of delay in the budget’s approval?
In Timor-Leste for OBS 2019, the 2018 enacted budget being assessed by the survey was only approved on September 27, 2018, after having already extended the 2017 budget for most of the year on a month-by-month basis through a constitutional provision (“duo-decimal system”). The delay was caused due to a contentious election and a delay in forming a government – and the delay resulted in the citizen’s budget of the EB for 2018 being published late, even though the EB was published on time. There was a question of whether the 2018 approved budget should be treated as the EB, however, as it was approved so late. The team decided that because the document approved figures for the full-year, and not just the final three-months, it is considered the EB. Furthermore, even though the election delay was an extraordinary circumstance, it still impacted budget transparency, and therefore both the EB for 2018 and the CB of the EB for 2018 were the correct fiscal years to be assessed in OBS 2019.

4) The case of Guatemala in OBS 2021
As stipulated in the Political Constitution of the Republic of Guatemala, if the budget is not approved by November 30 of each year, the budget of the previous year will immediately enter into force (Guatemala has a calendar year fiscal year). At the end of 2019, the proposed budget for FY 2020 was not approved by the deadline, so the 2019 budget entered into force according to Decree 25-2018 of the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala. Notably, it was republished and contained some updates for 2020. In the case of the proposed budget for FY 2021, initially, Congress approved the proposal as a national emergency during the early morning of November 18, 2020, Decree 33-2020, in a scenario of severe criticism from the opposition benches, civil society, and citizens for the limited transparent and hasty mechanisms that led to its approval, with a favorable opinion signed on the same day of discussion and approval, without this opinion being really known, and increase in the budget of Congress on questionable issues. This generated severe criticism and social unrest, which resulted in days of demonstrations that were violently repressed by the security forces, in which even an unknown group (accused of government infiltrators) burned part of the facilities of the Congress of the Republic. The demonstrations not only intensified but also called for the resignation of the President as well as the deputies of Congress, especially the president of the legislative body. Therefore, Congress revoked the approval of Decree 33-2020. The deadline for budget approval expired, and consequently once again the previous budget was put into effect, as stipulated by law, which for 2020 was the 2019 budget, so for 2021 the Decree 25-2018 entered into force (Enacted Budget 2019), also as indicated by the Ministry of Finance on its page, plus the modifications that have been authorized through Decrees 12-2020, 13-2020 and 20-2020. Given that the 2021 Enacted Budget was republished on January 5, 2021 – past the cutoff date for OBS 2021 – we chose to look back to the 2020 Enacted Budget. Though it is essentially the 2019 Enacted Budget -- which we assessed for Guatemala in OBS 2019 -- because it was republished and also contained some updates for 2020, we chose to consider it for OBS 2021.

5) What if COVID prevented the publication of the a key budget document?
Even if the COVID crisis prevented the publication of a key budget document, we are not considering it to be an exceptional circumstance because of which we could look back to assess the document from a previous fiscal year. Many governments worked hard to ensure publication of budget documents, even during the pandemic, though these documents were at times less comprehensive and timely than usual. We would not want to give credit to a country that did not publish a document during the pandemic while penalizing a country that did publish a document, just one that is less comprehensive. In addition, it is difficult to pinpoint when COVID prevented a document's publication. Finally, COVID impacted all countries in the survey, unlike the usual exceptions allowed in the survey (a one-time election in a country, for example).

Note: One country that is still under discussion is Canada. The Government of Canada was set to present their budget for 2020/21 budget in late March 2020, before it was postponed in mid-March because of the pandemic. It was pushed back a few times, before finally being postponed indefinitely in early May. This continued for the rest of 2020. Between 12 March 2020 and 30 December 2020 the Parliament passed 12 spending or tax bills. A number of these (if not a majority) are the legislation that we are considering Canada’s emergency fiscal policy package in the COVID Module. While there was no budget proposal for 2020/21, the Government did publish a Fall Economic Statement 2020 in November – this is the document that we will consider as the MYR for 2020/21 and the PBS for 2021/22. Canada also presented an “Economic and Fiscal Snapshot 2020” in July, which was a new document that focused on the Government’s fiscal response to COVID (and we use heavily in the COVID Module).

Because Canada's lack of publication of these budget documents was not a transparency issue but rather a calculated response to the pandemic - particularly in the case of the budget proposal - it is still under team discussion.

6) Can online transparency platforms be used to answer indicators for formulation/approval documents?
In OBS 2021 we encountered several countries that were using different types of portals to respond to questions of the PBS, EBP and, EB. Among these were: Ecuador, Argentina and, Mexico.

Argentina had used the Open Data Portal of the National Government in OBS 2019 under the criteria that it was mentioned in the Referral Message. However, in OBS 2021 said site was not mentioned in the bill or the referral message and therefore the researcher was not considering it to respond to questions.

Ecuador had used the Execution Portal for questions of the EBP, EB, IYR and, MYR under the criteria that the access was on the same page as the access to the EBP and EB.

For Mexico, the Budget Transparency Portal was created back in 2011 and is the result of joint work with different civil society and business organizations, including Fundar our OBS partner, to disseminate and make transparent information on the performance of the Pp using graphs, tables and, educational maps in a citizen language. Together with these organizations, we are working on a common agenda in terms of transparency, accountability and, a new strategy of informing citizens through the “Citizen Budget”. Mexico went through a process of legal reforms in transparency and the portal was accepted to be considered in the OBS under the agreement that it was established in the legal regulations.

The explanatory memorandum and the draft decree of expenditures used to make a more explicit reference that has changed over the years, case in point instead of a single general text, now different articles of the decree referred to the fact that the information must also be published on the portal, for example contracts, programs, information by gender. Also, the phrasing has changed from “Budget Transparency Portal” to “Electronic Transparency Portal”, also multiple references to publishing in “open data”.

According to the researcher Budget Transparency portal of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit is a great advance in terms of access to public information. An effort promoted by the government (SHCP) and civil society, as highlighted in a press note on the 10th anniversary of this platform and its importance.

On Mexico see also The Road to Budget Transparency in Mexico.

In order to arrive at a uniform criterion that was consistent across countries, the decision that was agreed is that an explicit reference is required linking the documents to the portal. Being consistent with what we accept in different countries, it would be necessary:


 * 1.	See an explicit reference to the platform in any of the other key budget documents (for example, if the EBP explicitly says: "Check the online platform for x, y, z".
 * 2.	The purpose of the platform: that the information on the platform is published alongside these documents. (For example: Do not use performance reports to answer about formulation information).

In that sense, we decided to:


 * Not accept the Argentina portal this round, as the explicit reference was missing.
 * Not accept the Ecuador portal this round to answer questions on the PBS, EBP and, EB, since having the two accesses (portal and documents) in the same webpage is not considered sufficient. That said the Execution portal is accepted to answer questions of the IYR and MYR.
 * Accept the Mexico portal, given the long historic track, the diverse references to publishing the info in the “Electronic Transparency Portal” o in “open data”, the purpose and robustness of the portal.

7) Case of Iraq in OBS 2021
Per our standards, to be considered publicly available, an Enacted Budget must be released no later than three months after the budget is approved by the legislature. For OBS 2019, we assessed the Enacted Budget for FY2018, which was published a few weeks after the budget was approved in March 2018. As you can see in the OBS 2019 case, the budget was approved after the fiscal year (the calendar year) had already started.

The next year, the Enacted Budget for FY2019 was also published in the right timeframe and in this case the legislature approved the budget sooner, although still after fiscal year 2019 had already started, which is why we didn’t assess it last round of the survey (it fell after the cutoff date of December 31, 2018).

In 2020, political conflicts and low oil prices led to a delay in sending the draft budget for FY2020 to the House of Representatives. It was sent to parliament well into the budget year, on September 14, 2020. One day later, the Finance Committee in the House of Representatives announced that the government withdrew the draft 2020 budget from parliament to the re-discuss it and make changes to it. In December 2020, the Finance Committee in the House of Representatives confirmed that the 2020 draft budget had not been received. By that time it was so late in the year that the government decided simply to work on the budget for 2021.

(Note that in the absence of a budget, the Financial Management Law was used to finance spending in 2020. It does not appear that any of the interim spending measures were published on the MoF website.)

Question: In this case, would we choose to assess the Enacted Budget for FY2020 for the OBS 2021, and thus consider it not produced? Or in light of the political conflict as an exceptional circumstance, and given OBS guidelines on how to assess the EB as publicly available, would we choose to go back to assess the Enacted Budget for FY2019?

This was a long and thorny discussion in OBS 2021 in the case of Iraq. Normally, given the cutoff date for this survey of December 31, 2020, we would assess the FY 2020 Enacted Budget for the survey. As rightly noted by the researcher, Iraq did not publish a federal budget for the fiscal year 2020. However, by Open Budget Survey methodology, if particular budget document was not released for the most recent fiscal year (in this case 2020) because of some legitimate, one-time event (e.g., an election), it is permissible to use the previous fiscal year as the basis for answering questions about this document. For consistency across countries, the IBP team discussed the situation in Iraq and proposes to go back a fiscal year and assess the FY 2019 Enacted Budget for this survey, for a few reasons: Firstly, the government has regularly published their enacted budget every year since at least 2012, and in addition, published the FY 2021 budget in a timely manner. By OBS criteria, FY 2020 was an exceptional year due to political circumstances – it was the only year in which an Enacted Budget has not been published in a long time. Secondly, the lack of publication of the FY 2020 Enacted Budget does not appear to be a transparency issue – it was not published because there simply was no Enacted Budget to publish, since the legislature did not receive the updated 2020 budget proposal. Since the survey is assessing transparency, it is legitimate to look back to the previous fiscal year.

Related question: What fiscal year of EBP should we assess in OBS 2021? The EBP has never been made publicly available in Iraq. Last round of the survey, in OBS 2019, we assessed the FY2019 EBP. But this round, the FY2021 EBP had not yet been approved by parliament by our cutoff date (meaning we cannot assess it and should look back a year). Should we assess the FY2020 EBP, which was never produced due to political conflicts? Or should we assess the FY2019 EBP – the same document we assessed in OBS 2019?

Note from Sally: While this is complicated by the fact that the government withdrew their draft budget from Parliament for revisions, and then never resubmitted it, my initial view would be that we consider the draft FY 2020 budget that was submitted to Parliament on Sept 14 as the document to be assessed, from the viewpoint that any draft budget that is submitted to the legislature is of interest to the public, even if it is later withdrawn for revisions.