Final account

Transparency Serbia pointed out that delivering of final budget account to the NA, which has finally happened after more than four years, is only one of the things that Ministry of Finances and the Government  had to do in order to make the budget related proceedings more transparent and accountable. According to international research Open Budget Index, which is published every second year, Serbia scores worse (last time it had only 43 out of 100 possible points).  

Although laws are decent, their violations at least recently weresevere. Submitting of the budget and the final account to the National Assembly and the public represents the beginning, and not the end of activities related to this subject.

For example, it would be logical that the Assembly who approves the budget shows interest into situations in which Government steps away from approved, takes assets from the program of one user and transfer it to contingency funds, to spend them for entirely different purpose.

TSis currently implementing the research about use of contingency funds, where we encounter the wall of silence in the Ministry of Finances and the Government in regards to criteria for disbursing of these assets. One thing the Ministry and the Government could do, to significantly improve its transparency. In that sense they could look up to the municipalities and cities within Serbia. Currently, periodical (monthly) reports on spending the budget provide only general overview of the situation by main lines. Instead, they could publish table that would, even on a daily level, show how much money was approved to every user and each program and how much has been spent until today.