Middle East and North Africa Makes Progress on Budget Accountability in Effort to Rebuild Legitimacy Despite Volatility
IBP expresses deep solidarity with its civil society partners in Palestine and Lebanon, who continue to advance accountability efforts amid the war on Gaza and Lebanon within the escalating violence in the region.
Their efforts, alongside partners across the region, demonstrate the indispensable role of civil society in upholding accountability in the most challenging and volatile contexts.
Selected Country Highlights from the Region
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What is the Open Budget Survey?
Implemented globally for more than two decades, the Open Budget Survey (OBS) is a globally recognized benchmark for assessing government accountability in public finance. It measures accountability across three pillars:
Transparency
Is there timely, accessible, and comprehensive information about how government budgets are planned and spent?
Participation
Do civil society and the broader public (including historically excluded groups) have structured opportunities to engage at key moments and influence budget choices?
Oversight
Do the legislature and audit institutions have the authority and practices needed to review the budget and scrutinize how it is implemented?
Together, they determine whether constituencies and their representatives can see how public money is planned and spent, question decisions and deviations, and influence priorities before and during implementation. In this sense, the survey acts as a proxy for democratic credibility in public finance: it signals whether budget systems are open enough to support trust, contestation and corrective action.
The OBS 2025 Regional Analysis for Middle East and North Africa
The State of National Budget Accountability in the Region
According to the Arab Barometer 2025, legitimacy is linked to dignity and service delivery. Up to 90% of citizens in Arab countries associate democracy less with elections and more with outcomes such as equality under the law, access to basic services, and the absence of corruption.
While the Arab region faces ongoing conflict, democratic strain, and fiscal pressures, OBS 2025 results show gradual gains in budget transparency and oversight. Governments across the region are under pressure to spend more on services while managing rising debt and the costs of conflict. Strengthening citizen engagement in budget processes presents a critical pathway to rebuilding legitimacy, fostering trust, and renewing the social contract.
The OBS 2025 round, covering eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, reflects continued—though uneven—progress across all three pillars (transparency, oversight, and public participation), driven by sustained civil society engagement despite constrained political environments. These trends show that public budgets remain one of the few institutionalized arenas where accountability can still operate.
Participation remains the weakest pillar. Nevertheless, incremental gains in countries such as Jordan, Morocco, and Egypt underscore the pivotal role of civil society in enabling more meaningful and sustained engagement.
The budget as a vehicle for meaningful engagement in a challenging context
Budget accountability and transparency is not only technical — a matter of data availability — but also political and institutional. Closing gaps requires moving beyond information disclosure toward meaningful participation and oversight that can reinforce legitimacy. Many countries in the region still fall short of providing sufficient information to allow for meaningful public discussions on the budget. Nevertheless, several have published more key budget documents and strengthened oversight and participation practices.
These improvements underscore that although many countries in this region are undergoing democratic transition, post-conflict recovery, or operating under occupation, public budgets remain one of the few formal and institutionalized spaces where governments are open to public contestation.
Even in constrained political environments, budget processes continue to provide structured entry points for civic engagement and oversight.
Bright Spots in the Region
Several bright spots show that despite governance challenges, several governments have the political will to drive reforms that can lead to meaningful public scrutiny and oversight.
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Civil Society is a game-changer in budget accountability
Incremental gains in budget accountability practices in the region reflect, in part, the sustained role of civil society organizations— there are gains in many countries where civil society has remained active.
Despite restrictive civic space, many organizations have played a meaningful role in securing formal and informal channels for public input into how public money is raised and spent and are engaging with budget actors at the national, local and sectoral level.
Civil society plays a critical bridging role between the public and formal institutions, translating the budget from a technical document into one that connects with people’s daily concerns. They often provide public-friendly formats that link budget figures and local and sectoral allocations to the quality of services and the positions of youth and women in budget priorities. These engagements help the public understand the budget and turn their priorities into concrete input that governments and oversight institutions can act upon. In contexts where trust in public institutions is fragile, civil society groups sustain accountability through structured engagement with parliaments, supreme audit institutions and executive government.
The Open Budget Survey remains one of the few internationally recognized, independent tools for assessing budget accountability — and its findings continue to provide civil society with credible evidence to engage governments on reform. Groups are leveraging this information to advocate for issues that matter to them, often working at all levels of government and adapting to shifting political contexts, to drive progress, which is key to achieving legitimacy.
Trailblazing Stories From Our Civil Society Partners in the Region
Oversight Institutions as Guardians of Credibility
Recent transparency gains across the region are important, but they matter only if published budgets reflect fiscal reality and are subject to real scrutiny. Without effective oversight, improvements in disclosure can remain procedural rather than influencing how public money is actually managed.
Strong oversight by legislatures and Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) helps prevent slippage, backtracking, and selective disclosure, particularly during fiscal pressure and political volatility. Oversight institutions can also use available budget data to measure progress against national development plans, sectoral priorities and core service delivery functions. Tools such as child-responsive budgeting, gender tagging and other thematic budget markers enable them to assess whether public spending aligns with governments’ stated social and equity commitments.
Collaboration between civil society and oversight institutions strengthens the use of budget data and helps anchor accountability practices beyond political cycles.
The 2025 OBS data reflect some improvements in oversight, particularly as legislatures strengthened their practices. Egypt’s overall oversight score increased from 50 in OBS 2019 to 59 in OBS 2025, with legislative oversight rising from 53 to 61 over the same period, indicating stronger parliamentary scrutiny of the budget. Lebanon’s oversight score reflects improved parliamentary functioning despite severe political and economic crises. Morocco strengthened legislative review of audit reports from the Court of Accounts, and in Jordan, the parliamentary finance committee published a report on its findings before the budget was adopted. In Tunisia, despite broader democratic regression, there was some restoration of legislative and audit oversight in this round of the survey.
However, critical oversight gaps remain across the budget cycle. For example, few countries provide opportunities for legislators to examine budgets and policies in-depth during budget formulation, implementation, and audit phases.
Despite some improvements, weaknesses in legislative oversight across the budget cycle remain.
Investment, fiscal risk, and debt accountability in the region
Across the region, gaps remain in the information governments provide on fiscal risks in their budget documents.
For those that published draft budgets, 4 out of 5 do not present information on expenditure arrears—which arise when a government has entered into a commitment to spend funds but has not made the payment when it is due— or contingent liabilities, such as loans guaranteed by the central government. And no country includes projections in their budget proposals assessing the sustainability of government finances over the long term.
On debt and borrowing, governments provide more details. All countries in the region that published draft budgets provide at least two debt-related estimates for the upcoming fiscal year. Net new borrowing is consistently reported, but the level of detail varies: some countries disclose the full range of debt information, including total debt and interest payments, while others report on interest payments but not total debt outstanding. However, only two of these countries go further to publish additional information on the composition of total debt outstanding in their draft budgets. But only two of these countries publish additional information on the composition of total debt outstanding in their draft budgets. During budget execution, most countries publish updated borrowing and debt figures — including information on debt composition — reflecting actual borrowing to date. However, more comprehensive updates — such as those included in Mid-Year Reviews and Year-End Reports — are published by only a small number of countries.
Large investment deals and rising public debt levels underscore the importance of expanding accountability to cover more detailed debt reporting across the budget cycle. The risks stem not from the investments themselves, but from insufficient scrutiny of fiscal risks and long-term debt sustainability.
Transparent fiscal frameworks and effective oversight strengthen investor confidence and long-term stability.
Evidence shows that greater fiscal transparency is associated with improved sovereign credit ratings and lower borrowing costs, reinforcing investor confidence and long-term stability.
Ways to Strengthen Budget Accountability in the Region
Image credit: International Budget Partnership
Transparency
OBJECTIVE
To build on essential disclosure that together with participation and oversight makes accountability visible
RECOMMENDATIONS
Publish key budget documents such as Pre-Budget Statements, which set out the government’s budget strategies for the coming budget year—a moment when public communication about intentions is important for greater citizen awareness and engagement in the formulation of the budget.
Maintain the publication of key budget documents, such as Citizens Budgets. Budgets should not only be available to the public—they should also be presented in an accessible format so that people can engage with the information and understand priorities and decisions made.
Strengthen the comprehensiveness of existing budget documents over time. For instance, draft budgets should include more information on fiscal risks.
GOOD PRACTICES
Egypt is one of only two countries in the region that publishes a Mid-Year Review, a document that enables a comprehensive assessment of actual spending and revenue collection against original estimates at the midpoint of the budget year, and which can indicate whether the budget needs adjustments. During this round of the survey, Egypt strengthened its Semi-Annual Report to include updated expenditure and revenue estimates for the budget year underway; more disaggregated sources of revenue; and information on some of the reasons why government borrowing and debt estimates changed. Stronger budget execution documents can help the public track their government’s ability to uphold promises.
Participation
OBJECTIVE
To open spaces for public input and influence over key budget decisions
RECOMMENDATIONS
Proactively consult civil society organizations, which are well placed to channel the public’s priorities into budget decisions and to help make budget information accessible to the public.
Enshrine a framework for public input into the budget in law.
Use local efforts as a starting point for creating mechanisms to bring public input into the formulation and implementation of the national budget.
GOOD PRACTICES
While mechanisms for direct public engagement in Morocco’s national budget process remain nascent, recent initiatives are opening up space for people to express their opinions or to make proposals regarding public programs, projects and policies, for example using the e-participation portal (https://www.eparticipation.ma/), inaugurated in mid-2023. Another initiative allows the public and associations to be involved in the development, monitoring and evaluation of a portion of their local authority’s budget. Such mechanisms can be a starting point for governments to scale up direct engagement platforms for the national budget process.
Oversight
OBJECTIVE
To ensure oversight leads to action
RECOMMENDATIONS
Legislatures should debate budget policy prior to the tabling of the draft budget to, among other reasons, enable the public more time for input into the formulation of the budget.
Submit key budget documents to specialized legislative committees for review, providing opportunities for individual legislators to gain relevant expertise, and to examine budgets and policy in depth.
Ensure audit institutions have the independence and resources they need to produce and publish all types of audits, including audits on the accuracy of financial information, whether the government is in compliance with laws and regulations and whether activities were undertaken efficiently and effectively.
GOOD PRACTICES
In this round of the survey, Jordan maintained its position as a regional leader in budget transparency, continuing to provide sufficient information to support informed public discussions on the budget, while also making small gains in legislative and audit oversight. The parliamentary finance committee published a report on its findings before the budget was adopted, and senior staff from the Audit Bureau more frequently attended parliamentary meetings. These practice improvements illustrate that budget transparency is critical, but accountability is bolstered if published budgets are subject to real and timely oversight.
Looking Ahead: Consolidating Gains and Expanding Reform Pathways
Despite a volatile environment, sustained and measurable improvements across the region demonstrate that institutional reform is possible and that public budgets can serve as a durable foundation for trust-building and accountability.
Gains in budget accountability, which already signal improved legitimacy, can be further expanded to cover debt transparency, public investment accountability and stronger coherence across the broader fiscal governance framework.
Meaningful citizen engagement in budget decisions—across levels and sectors—supported by a vibrant civil society that makes budgets readable and relevant to the public, can reduce volatility in fragile contexts, where budgets are among the last functioning arenas for public answerability.
Expanding civic space remains essential to enable civil society organizations to operate independently and engage consistently in public finance processes, strengthening their role in bridging citizens and institutions and sustaining accountability efforts over time.
Improved oversight can provide an opportunity for greater engagement between oversight bodies and CSOs, while ensuring that available budget information can be used to monitor progress in the longer term against social development plans and the government’s social protection commitments. When budget decisions are effectively scrutinized, findings are acted upon and accountability mechanisms are sustained.
Power in Numbers: How Budget Literacy Transformed Youth Education Advocacy in Jordan
Closing the Policy to Reality Gap: Khadija Errebah and the Long Fight to Bring Gender Equality to Life in Morocco
Budget transparency is not an optional upgrade. It is a lifeline.
Image credit: Transparency International - Lebanon
Participatory budgeting bolsters youth engagement and health services
Image credit: Shamseya
Open Budget Survey Partners
Algeria
Zine Barka
Independent Researcher
Libya
International Budget Partnership
For inquiries, contact IBP directly
Tunisia
Karim Trabelsi
Independent Researcher
Emad Emam
Cosette Wong Highfill
Alex Kreko
Laura Castillo Cabral
David Robins
Cynthia Romero
Sally Torbert
Rajan Zaveri
Lilianna Ziedins
