Question 32

Does the Executive’s Budget Proposal or any supporting budget documentation, what is the most recent year presented for which the debt figures reflect actual outcomes?
 * a. Two years prior to the budget year (BY-2).
 * b. Three years prior to the budget year (BY-3).
 * c. Before BY-3.
 * d. No actual data for government debt are presented in the budget or supporting budget documentation.
 * e. Not applicable/other (please comment).

Guidelines
Question 32 asks for which year the actual outcome for debt is shown. In most cases, the most recent year for which budget data on actual outcomes are available will be BY-2, as BY-1 is generally not yet finished when the budget proposal is drafted. So a government that has updated its debt data for BY-2 to reflect what actually occurred, as opposed to estimating the outcome for that year, shows good public financial management practice.

For an “a” answer, a country must meet the good practice of having the figures for BY-2 reflect actual outcomes.

1) What if other debt information, but not total debt, is presented?
We interpret this question as asking for total debt (we’re not looking for interest payments, net new financing, etc).

For Jordan in OBS 2019, which provided specifics about the debt (specifically total external debt and net domestic debt) for BY-2, we accepted the debt information presented.

On the other hand, Malawi in OBS 2019 presented total interest payments and net new financing as of BY-2. We agreed that this information did not qualify.