Progress Under Pressure: Budget Accountability in MENA
8:00 am – 9:30 am ET
HQ2-03B-768B Lecture Room,
IMF Headquarters, Washington DC
United States
Virtual Event
Our webinar, “Progress Under Pressure: Budget Accountability in MENA,” brought together public financial management experts from Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, and Egypt alongside IBP staff and the European Commission to unpack what the OBS 2025 data tell us — and what they mean for the work ahead.
The session opened with remarks from IBP Executive Director Ana Patricia Muñoz and Pablo Cendoya Revenga from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for MENA.
Change has to be locally led, but it should also be globally connected. It has been 20 years of the Open Budget Survey — and progress is possible. We have seen it in all three pillars: in participation, in oversight, and in transparency. But we can also say that this is not enough. We need to deepen those reforms, sustain that change, and go deeper — not only in overall transparency of the budget, but in debt transparency, in tax transparency, and how this translates into real outcomes for real people.
Transparency is at the core of the social contract, and it is a key element to build trust between citizens and public authorities — and therefore to build national cohesion that contributes to stability. Increasing transparency does not require complex and lengthy structural reforms. It is rather a political decision that can have immediate political benefits.
David Robins, IBP’s Open Budget Survey Manager, presented the regional findings. The OBS 2025 round surveyed eight MENA countries and found continued — if uneven — progress across all three pillars of budget accountability: transparency, participation, and oversight.
Bright Spots Across the Region
Progress is not a story about one country or one government. It is a story about people — inside and outside government — who believe public budgets should serve the public. Here is what is moving in the region:
In Jordan, the participation score rose from 4 to 18 — one of the most significant jumps recorded. Parliament, the executive, and the Audit Bureau each opened new spaces for public engagement. The parliamentary finance committee also published its findings before the budget was adopted, a strong signal that legislators are working with information, not in the dark.
In Morocco, the participation score rose from 15 to 24, driven by the launch of the e-participation portal, giving citizens a structured way to weigh in on public programs. The Ministry of Economy and Finance has committed to deepening participatory practices across the budget cycle.
In Egypt, the government is now publishing financial, compliance, and performance audit reports previously withheld from the public. At the community level, Shamseya Health Care Innovation — working with UNICEF and the Ministry of Finance — has been building budget literacy and strengthening monitoring of health sector spending in Beni Suef governorate. This is what it looks like when the budget stops being a technical document and starts being a tool for people’s lives.
In Palestine, civil society is holding the line on accountability under extraordinary circumstances. The AMAN Coalition continues to bridge citizens and institutions, translating budget data into information that connects to daily concerns — access to services, distribution of resources, humanitarian accountability. As Hama Ziedan made clear: in times of crisis, budget accountability becomes more important, not less.
Excerpts from our panelists
Emad Emam, IBP’s Senior Program Officer for Regional Coordination, MENA moderated a panel discussion with government officials, parliamentarians, and civil society leaders from across the region.
The participatory relationship between the parliament, the citizens, and the CSOs is very important and is a key national model to build on. CSOs are now enhancing citizens' skills and capacities to better understand and engage in all the steps of the budget process. Engaging citizens and CSOs through participatory dialogues with the parliament helps us to better define priorities more accurately, so that the government and the parliament can take it into account while they prepare the budget.
It is very important to institutionalize citizen participation. The ministry has planned to put in place an open budget platform. Several steps were taken — a survey to identify the needs of citizens, awareness-raising workshops with rural citizens and underrepresented social categories, a consensus workshop with civil society representatives and journalists, and then a recommendations workshop. Now we want to have in place an updated action plan on budget transparency that covers all the lessons learned from all the previous experiences.
In times of war and crisis, budget accountability becomes more important, not less. Scarce resources, enormous humanitarian needs, and large flows of aid and emergency funding all increase the risks of mismanagement and unfair distribution. Discussing budget transparency here is not a technical luxury. It is part of protecting public trust and ensuring that limited resources are used more efficiently and equitably.
Our work with the Ministry of Finance had a direct impact — not only on the lives of citizens and their ability to access information related to the budget and health, but it also enabled them to have a voice and communicate their needs to officials at the local level. The state should give civil society the opportunity, support it, watch from a distance, and facilitate its work. This is the guarantee that this model can be replicated across the country.
There is a story of change — there are challenges, but there is hope in the MENA region. Under pressure, we are still able to advance fiscal governance and budget transparency. We will continue to engage with governments, civil society, supreme audit institutions, and parliament to take this opportunity further.
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