Union budget: India
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Budget transparency
2013-14
The Times of India, Sep 10 2015
India's budget transparency score worse than Bangladesh's
NZ tops list, China lowest among BRICS
An international report on budget transparen cy places India at a middling level globally and next only to Bangladesh in South Asia. The report, which looks at 2013-14, the last year of the UPA, gave India a score of 46 on 100, just slightly better than the average of 45 for all the countries surveyed. The report, Open Budget Survey 2015, brought out by the International Budget Partnership, evaluates countries on the transparency of their budgeting process on several counts under three major heads public participation, oversight by the legislature and oversight by audit. India scores an impressive 75 on 100 in oversight by audit, but performs poorly on the other two counts. In particular, on public participation, India's score was a mere 19 on 100.
On top of the list was New Zealand with a score of 88.Sweden, South Africa, Norway and the US all scored in the eighties. Among the BRICS nations, apart from South Africa, Brazil with 77 and Russia with 73 had scores well above India's, but China with a score of just 14 was judged to have among the least transparent budget processes.
India's score is a significant dip from the 62 it scored in an earlier round of the same survey in 2012. However, the sharp drop is largely on account of temporary factors like the mid-year review and the year-end report not being presented in time.
These delays could be attributed to changes in personnel (like Raghuram Rajan moving from the chief economic advisor's job to head the RBI and his replacement taking time), which is why they are seen as a temporary regression.
The report does make the point, though, that while the regressions may be temporary and the rebound from them quick, they highlight what can happen “when the mechanics of publishing documents on time are not sufficiently institutionalized“.
Had India retained its score of 62 it would have been among the better countries globally and comfortably led in South Asia.
The research for the survey was done by 102 research and civil society organisations working around the world. The organisation doing the research for India was the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), an NGO advocating greater transparency and accountability in budget making in India.
Financial year
2017: MP first state to go for Jan-Dec
MP first state to go for Jan-Dec fiscal, May 3, 2017: The Times of India
The Narendra Modi government is still mulling shifting the financial year from April-March to January-December, but Madhya Pradesh has already announced a merger of the fiscal and calendar years.
“The state cabinet has decided to change the financial year to January-December from April-March. The state budget will be tabled in December-January while financial closure will be done in December every year,“ state le gislative affairs and public relations minister Narottam Mishra told reporters after Tuesday's cabinet meeting.
The minister did not elaborate how the government would go about it especially when the Centre would be on a different schedule. He said the MP government would “try to finish the current budget proceedings by December this year“. “The next budget will be presented in December this year, or in January 2018,“ he added.
