USAID Fiscal Transparency Activity (FT) in Honduras

The Citizen Budget initiative aimed to address the country's low fiscal transparency score, as measured by the Open Budget Index (OBI). Honduras consistently scored poorly in providing budget information, with a particular deficiency in the citizen's budget, a nontechnical presentation designed to reach and be understood by a large segment of the population. The Honduran citizen's budget lacked accessibility in its format, along with macroeconomic context and an analysis of the potential impacts of current public policies. To address this challenge, USAID supported SEFIN in creating a comprehensive citizen's budget. The USAID team developed the Citizen Budgets for 2019 and 2020 fiscal years in several formats, including a standard set of information such as expenditure and revenue totals, main policy initiatives, macroeconomic forecast, and contact information for queries. A Citizen Budget website was also developed to facilitate the accuracy and timeliness of updates by SEFIN staff. The portal displays all the elements of the PDF version Citizens' Budget while also providing graphic representations to a set of frequently asked questions. A condensed version of the comprehensive Citizen Budget document was also produced to encourage broader dissemination. The launch of the Citizen Budget received extensive news coverage in both traditional and social media, with the video recording of the launch event posted on Facebook achieving over a thousand views. The results of the USAID Fiscal Transparency Activity contributed to Honduras' OBI score rising from 54 (2017) to 59 (2019). The OBI score evaluates countries on eight key budget documents available to the public online and whether these documents present budget information in a comprehensive and useful way. The improvement in Honduras' OBI score was directly attributed to the publishing of the Citizens Budget online in a timely manner and the increase of information provided in the Executive's Budget Proposal. The Minister of Finance, Rocio Tábora, expressed her gratitude for the work carried out by USAID, highlighting the importance of the team's technical assistance in generating the necessary documents, sites, and tools to facilitate simple access for the public.