Nearly half of the world’s population lives in countries where debt payments surpass spending on health and education, crowding out spending on schools and immunization. As debt levels rise and fiscal pressures intensify across the Global South, the question of who scrutinizes borrowing decisions, and with what tools, has never been more consequential.
Last week at the 2026 World Bank – International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington DC, IBP launched new research that takes a hard look at how well domestic accountability systems are working and where they are falling short.
Who Decides, Who Pays: The Debt Accountability Question
Building on IBP’s Open Budget Survey, which has been tracking budget transparency, participation and oversight for two decades now, we partnered with civil society organizations to pilot a Debt Accountability Module across 11 countries: Benin, Cameroon, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Tanzania.
This research builds on what the Open Budget Survey already measures and examines debt accountability across two further dimensions: how connected debt management decisions are to the budget cycle, and whether the formal oversight authority held by parliaments, supreme audit institutions, and civil society is actually being exercised in practice.
The evidence points to a clear pattern: debt accountability systems are falling short where it matters most. Across countries, information exists, but accountability does not follow.
1. Public Debt Data Is Available but Not Meaningful
Our research first updated existing assumptions around debt transparency. We found that the challenge faced by accountability actors in engaging with debt processes is the kind of information being made available, as much as its quantity.
Virtually every country in our sample publishes aggregate data on the debt stock and planned borrowing. Many also publish technical details on composition, maturity, and currency mix. What is largely missing is the analysis that turns these numbers into something accountability actors can engage with: what borrowing is for, how it aligns with fiscal priorities, what it crowds out, and whether past borrowing delivered the outcomes it was meant to.
Executives are therefore failing to present the debt information that legislatures, civil society, and the public care about most: its purpose and impact.
There is a good level of [debt] transparency in Benin, but citizens still don’t see how borrowed funds are actually used. What citizens need to understand is the real use and impact of debt, not just the numbers.
Our research also uncovered more significant information gaps on public debt. Across the 11 countries assessed, not a single government fully publishes individual loan agreements or consistently provides comprehensive public disclosure of contingent liabilities like state-owned enterprise debt, public-private partnership commitments, or resource-backed loans across the budget cycle. This means that official debt figures are systematically incomplete, and neither legislators, SAIs, nor civil society has full visibility of loan commitment and obligations as decisions are being made.
2. Debt Decisions Remain Disconnected from Budget Processes
Recognizing that budgetary processes present the most reliable and regular opportunities for accountability, we also examined how connected, or disconnected, debt decisions are from the budget cycle. Good practice demands that countries publish debt management strategies and borrowing plans in step with the annual budget planning process, early enough to effectively inform legislative consideration and public input, so that borrowing decisions are made alongside larger fiscal planning and national development priorities.
Just half of the countries that published a debt strategy did so at the same time as their pre-budget statement. Even more concerning, only one country, Benin, published an annual borrowing plan before or alongside the budget approval process.
These findings suggest that borrowing decisions are, in many cases, being made in a parallel lane from the larger fiscal planning process, which is potentially distancing debt from the development priorities it is meant to serve. When this happens, parliament, civil society, and the public miss the narrow window to meaningfully engage with fiscal choices. Instead of being clearly linked to investments in schools, hospitals, social protection or infrastructure, debt is treated as a technical exercise. This disconnect makes it harder to ensure that borrowing is actually improving people’s lives and advancing national development goals.
3. Where Legal Authority Exists, Oversight Can Still Fall Short
In part, the opacity and poor timing of debt disclosures is what hinders accountability actors like parliaments from effectively overseeing borrowing. We find that while most legislatures and audit institutions have the authority to oversee public debt, they are failing to exercise it in practice.
In 8 of the 11 countries covered, legislatures have a formal legal role in reviewing debt strategies and borrowing plans. Yet in practice, only five of those legislatures actually reviewed a medium-term debt strategy or annual borrowing plan. Likewise, while 10 of the 11 SAIs in our sample have the authority to audit debt, only Indonesia conducts and publishes its debt-related audits publicly annually.
Oversight is not just about laws. It’s about how those laws work in practice. Parliamentary oversight depends on access to clear, timely, and detailed debt information. Debt transparency alone is not enough—information must be used, scrutinized, and debated.
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy’s Public Debt Management Assessment Tool for Parliamentarians (PDMAT 2.0) offers important insight into how legislatures can reclaim their legal mandate. In its Nigeria assessment, WFD recommends that legislatures should demand timely submission of debt strategies and borrowing plans, push for executive responses to parliamentary recommendations once these are given, and organize public hearings to allow for input from citizens and civil society.
4. Civil Society Is Stepping Up — But Cannot Do This Alone
The picture is not entirely bleak. Our research shows that where accountability gaps exist in formal processes, civil society organizations are stepping up to fill them. Civil society helps surface ground-level impacts, bring independent analysis, and sustain public pressure, especially when oversight institutions lack capacity, information or political space. Kenya, Nigeria and Benin have active civil society ecosystems doing work that formal oversight institutions are not, even though only Kenya has a regular, meaningful public platform where debt and deficits are formally discussed between government and citizens.
But civil society engagement is fragile where it is not institutionalized. Only 4 out of 11 countries had legislation covering public participation in public finance or debt management. Without formal opportunities to participate in debt decisions, access to published audit findings, or disclosure of loan agreements that enables independent analysis, CSO engagement remains reactive.
Even where the legal infrastructure exists, parliaments are not necessarily fulfilling that oversight role in practice. That is where civil society can also play an important role. And that role is concrete.
What Needs to Change
Our evidence points toward a set of practical, interconnected reforms. Ministries of Finance need to publish debt information that accountability actors can actually use. This means going beyond aggregate figures to link borrowing decisions to specific projects and sector priorities, publishing individual loan agreements, and disclosing contingent liabilities in full.
The key documents that carry this information, debt strategies and borrowing plans, need to be published in tandem with the budget process, so that parliaments and civil society can connect debt decisions to broader fiscal choices at the moments when those choices are actually being made.
Finally, public finance systems need opportunities for robust, regular engagement between ministries of finance, parliaments, SAIs and CSOs during the process of decision making. By leveraging the unique role and capacity of each actor, countries in our sample and beyond can actively strengthen public debt as a driver of development.
