On the availability of budget and spend data, Egypt ranked 2nd with 36 points below Oman which recorded 46 points and above Saudi Arabia at 30 points
Egypt rose above its regional neighbors in the Global Barometer’s Public Finance index, receiving a 49-point score above Jordan’s 28 points, marking Egypt as the region’s most transparent country in terms of the index’s indicators.
This is a new platform that includes a number of regional institutions and objective partners who seek to assess the availability of data, governance, and capacity.
The Public Finance index looks for “frameworks and platforms exist for publication of detailed, disaggregated, and machine-readable data on key aspects of government finance” that are published in a timely matter for the public to find.
Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait confirmed Egypt’s success on ranking first within the MENA region in the Global Barometer index, adding that the index helps decision-makers reduce risks resulting from global challenges. He also stressed that both the Global Barometer index and the Budget Transparency indicator are independent and specialized in budget transparency.
Within the public finance frameworks pillar, Egypt ranked first with 65 points followed by Jordan with 38 points and Oman with 3 points. The global average is 45 points.
On the availability of budget and spend data, Egypt ranked 2nd with 36 points below Oman which recorded 46 points and above Saudi Arabia at 30 points.
Maait highlighted the data index as a strong indicator that reflects the degree of safe investment within the country, helping investors to develop future plans, facilitating access to the financial policies of the Egyptian economy, and stimulating the investment climate, pointing out that transparency is linked to low rates of corruption.
The data has consolidated databases on these topics from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Global Initiative for Financial Transparency (GIFT), and the International Budget Partnership (IBP) in cooperation with the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
For his part, Deputy Minister of Finance Ahmed Kochouk stressed that Egypt has achieved great success by occupying first place in the Middle East in the open balance of public financial data according to the Global Barometer, and that it is not easy for any country to rise to this position because the Global Barometer index measures the state of data in relation to pressing societal issues in 109 countries based on more than 100 country-level researchers responsible for providing evidence of governance, capacity, availability, and use of data for the public good across a variety of different economic sectors with fiscal policy objectives and everything new regarding tax administration and the budget every year.
