05 Global Corruption
27/11/02 3:16pm
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Table 1 Three ‘critical areas’ of the budget process (% of positive responses to questions)
Argentina Brazil Chile Mexico Peru
Citizen participation
Accountability
Supervision of federal officials
8 11 21 8 6
25 24 39 24 19
20 33 37 17 26
Note The percentages for each area indicate the average proportion of experts who ‘agreed’ or ‘totally agreed’ with a number of statements. Each statement was worded so that agreement implies high transparency, and disagreement low transparency.
Table 2 Analysis of the legal framework (scale 0 to 1,000; 1,000 is most transparent)
Argentina Brazil Chile Mexico Peru
Citizen participation
Accountability
667 167 571 250 500
643 548 864 476 429
The third area that was classified as ‘critical’ was supervision of federal officials. Experts were asked whether they agreed with statements including: ‘In the event of an irregularity in the execution of the budget, it is possible to identify those that are responsible’; and ‘A functionary who misuses the budget for his or her own benefit or the benefit of others is penalised’. The analysis of the legal framework revealed that the deficient application of legislation is a general problem. The ratings given for the transparency provisions of legal frameworks were high relative to the ratings given for the actual level of budget transparency. When the legal frameworks were rated on a scale of 0 to 1,000, where 1,000 implied that there were full provisions for transparency, Chile received the highest average score (770) and Mexico the lowest (507). Table 2 shows the ratings for two elements of the legal frameworks: citizen participation in the budget and budget accountability. Both elements of the legal framework were given relatively high ratings in Chile and Argentina. The gap between the legal framework and the actual implementation of the framework is especially notable in the case of Argentina. 276
Global Corruption Report 2003