Even though government budgets are rationing of public money for governance, Indians do not get to know much about the budgets that the government presents annual budget.

Indian budget is still not fully open to public, says a survey conducted by the Centre for Budget and Government Accountability (CBGA) and Washington based International Budget Partnership (IBP).

"Are our government disclosing enough on budget? India scores 67 percent on open budget index (OBI), 2010 out of 94 countries budget data,” says the report. India is ahead of its neighbours except Sri Lanka which has the same score as India.

“India’s union budget provides significant information, but not extensive information,” Subrat Das, executive director of the CBGA told Governance Now. “There are seven countries including South Africa where information provided in the national budget is extensive but India it is still significant but not extensive,” Das added.

“India is one of the 20 countries in the 2010 survey, which provided citizens with enough budget data to enable them develop a comprehensive analysis and understanding of their national budgets,” the survey noted based on the responses to 92 questions in eight key budget documents made available to public.

This is the third global survey and India position has improved since the first survey released in 2006. “India ranked 53 percent in 2006 and 60 in 2008,” the survey said.

“India's improvement in rankings can be attributed to the fiscal responsibility in the budget management act (FRBM) has made it mandatory for the government to present various kinds of document on budgets which was not published earlier,” Das commented.

He also said that there are many things in terms of openness of budget information, where India is still lacking. “One count which is significant for the budget information is that is the pre-budget survey and in India there is no consideration on this aspect,” the report said.

The report mentioned, “The Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) is unable to issue timely audit reports on the final expenditures on national departments or facilitate proper channels of communication with public.”

“By making pre-budget survey available to public, it can give idea what the finance ministry is thinking, that gives rise to many debates and discussions among the civil society groups and others. In India, economic survey is present two-day before the budget, so how much you can debate. You don’t have time to debate,” Das noted.

He also said India should publish pre-budget survey three months before the presentation of the actual budget. “The proceeding of the public accounts committee should be made public. The overall office of the public accounts committee has to be strengthened,” Das said.

CBGA is planning to present the survey to the finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, asking him to implement some of the survey recommendations. “People should also be given opportunity to share their views with their legislatures. There should be some channel where people ideas must be channelised to these legislatures,” Ravi Duggal, programme officer, International Budget Partnership told Governance Now.

“There have been some much technological advancement in recent years, but government is still not using those technologies to make the budget more open,” P.R. Devi Prasad, director, Fiscal Policy Institute, government of Karnataka said.

South Africa with 92 percent ranks first in the global survey list. It is followed by New Zealand and United Kingdom at second and third number. The United States is ranked at seven on the openness of budget survey.

Read the report