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Lebanon’s recent crisis has shed light on the lack of transparency, weak fiscal discipline, and poor financial reporting and oversight that have pushed the country’s score to the bottom of the Open Budget Survey (6/100 in 2019 and 9/100 in 2021) where it stands below the regional average of countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Data on public spending is available ad-hoc, in non-searchable formats and hardly allows to make year-to-year comparisons or follow trends. Public participation practices are non-existent with the country scoring zero on the Open Budget Survey for several consecutive years. As the country battles with an unprecedented multifold crisis, improving fiscal transparency, access to information, and public participation in budgeting are essential ingredients for recovery.
Civil society’s efforts to improve public engagement in the budget process have strongly emerged during the past year. The Gherbal Initiative, launched in 2018, managed to make economic and budget data available to the public on a web-based platform and to lobby for the full application of the access to information law No. 28 of 2017. The Lebanese Transparency Association (local Transparency International Chapter) worked at enhancing the role and participation of civil society in budget advocacy by trying to put together a coalition of CSOs that would carry forward transparent and participatory budgeting.
The Lebanon Citizen Budget Dashboard
To complement and expand on these efforts, the Institute of Finance Basil Fuleihan at the Lebanese Ministry of Finance joined efforts with civil society to create the Lebanon Citizen Budget Dashboard (LCBD) in 2020 – thus providing access to disaggregated budget data. The LCBD harvests metadata from the Ministry of Finance of Lebanon, notably data retrieved from the official budget and from monthly reports published by the Ministry and transforms them, using technology at hand, into understandable, easy-to-read figures, appealing graphs, and visuals which the researchers can manipulate and use. The dashboard also provides access to general information on the budget calendar to help citizens better contextualize the data and includes a feedback section in which users can leave their comments for improvements and share their need for information.
In less than a year, the dashboard became a unique point of access to budget data. The Institute witnessed a growing demand for accessing and understanding fiscal information demonstrated by the large number of inquiries received through social media and other communication channels as well the number of requests for awareness sessions, especially from youth groups, new political formation, and media.
Live demonstrations and hands-on training on the use of the data were organized for more than 26 civil society organizations and youth groups, leading think tanks, and partners in Lebanon. The Institute of Finance was invited to demonstrate the LCBD approach and results in workshops organized by the IMF-Middle East Technical Assistance Center and the International Budget Partnership as well as bilaterally to ministries of Finance in Iraq and Sudan.
Building back better requires investing in fiscal literacy
How public money is collected and disbursed has become one of the most pressing questions for citizens today, notably in contexts where corruption and misuse of public resources are widespread. Better public money management is central to building back better in conflict-affected areas. It is a building block for the fiscal adjustment and structural reforms that the Lebanese citizens and refugees hosted by Lebanon will have to endure during the coming years. For this purpose, it is important that they are part of the conversation, fully engaged in the public debate, and that their voices are being translated into more inclusive budgets and public policies, catering for the real needs of communities, with no one being left behind.
Coalitions, partnerships as well as support by the international community are thus crucial: first, in building the technological infrastructure and skills that prepare and empower public administrations to open their data; and second, in establishing fiscal literacy programs that build an informed citizenship able to engage positively in the conversation.
By Lamia Moubayed Bissat, Vice-Chair of the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) and Director, Institut des finances Basil Fuleihan, Ministry of Finance, Lebanon