While budgets, both central and state, are notoriously opaque, Gujarat has ensured that most of its budget is available for public scrutiny, according to a survey by the Centre for Budget and Government Accountability (CBGA), a New Delhi-based think tank.

Gujarat topped a list of 10 states surveyed by the think-tank on budget transaparency. The evaluation, based on eight parameters, handed Gujarat a score of 61.7 percent.

The eight parameters of judging were - availability of budget documents, completeness of the information, interpretation of the information, timeliness, audit and performance assessment, legislative scrutiny, budgetary startegies for the disadvantaged sections and fiscal decentralisation.

Gujarat tops on two counts: availability of budget documents, completeness of the information scoring 87 and 85 respectively.

The report noted that in practices related to fiscal decentralisation, all the ten states have performed poorly. The average calculated among the ten states has been just 23 percent. This particular parameter examines ‘whether the state government follows relevant budgetary practices relating to devolution of funds to panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies.’ Even Gujarat's score on this count is a measly 24 percent.    

However, the report states that Gujarat may not have made a full disclosure.

“Several states are not bringing information on budget documents, executive assessment of the budget, separate statements on gender budgeting, funds developed to rural local bodies (RLBs) and urban local bodies (ULBs), and mid-term appraisal of the five year plan,” the study says damning other states and Gujarat for the lack of complete transparency.

Uttar Pradesh was the lowest scorer, awarded 43.5 percent by the survey. Rajasthan (44 percent), Maharashtra (48.3 percent) and Jharkhand (48.4 percent) too figure in the below-fifty-percent category. 

“In the era of the information revolution,  we are still not disclosing details extensively in governance,” Subrat Das, executive director of the CBGA told Governance Now.

The scores of other states are: Madhya Pradesh - 60.2 percent, Chhattisgarh – 56.1 percent, Odisha – 52.6 percent, Andhra Pradesh - 51.8 percent, and Assam – 50.1 percent.

The states do not put information on the action taken report on the observations of the CAG office. “For the state governments, the budgets could be lot more transparent and they could come out with strategy papers prior to the tabling of the budget, by the state finance ministers," Amitabh Mukhopadhyay, director general (DG) of Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) of India told Governance Now in an exclusive interview.

“In this area, transparency is very important, people must get their feeling that where their money go and efficiency of money being utilised,” Mukhopadhyay said.

CBGA demanded that the state government pay heed to the need of making their budgets transparent.

India scores 67 percent in the survey, which assessed the union budgets of the 94 countries. Read the report released in October.