Ministry of Finance opens the State Budget Public Portal to disclose budget information and data. Photo: T. Hang

Of this, Vietnam's budget transparency scores have improved in three main columns, 44/100 points for Public Budget,17/100 points for Public Participation, and 80/100 points for Budget Supervisory. All columns increased six points compared to 2019.

The Open Budget Survey (OBS) is an initiative to promote budget transparency, conducted by the IBP with independent social organizations (in Vietnam, the Center for Development and Integration – CDI) every two year since 2006, in more than 100 countries and territories around the world.

The Ministry of Finance has joined in four OBSs since 2015. After one survey, Vietnam’s budget transparency index has significantly improved.

According to the OBS results in 2015, 2017 and 2019, Vietnam recorded 18/100 points, 15/100 points and 38/100 points for Public Budget, 42/100 points, 7/100 points and 11/100 points for Public Participation; 68/100 points, 72/100 points and 74/100 points for Budget Supervisory respectively.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the OBS 2021 ranking results show Vietnam's efforts in promoting budget transparency. In addition to applying the 2015 State Budget Law in the direction of expanding the scope, entities, content and form of publicity, Vietnam has approached and followed good international practices such as publishing data of the three-year state budget - financial plan, building a citizen budget report in simple and easy-to-understand language, and diversifying forms of information communication to the people, thereby increasing their interest and active participation in the process of budget development and supervisory.

The highlight of Vietnam's OBS 2021 results is the increase in scores on the Public Participation, reaching 17/100 points, higher than the global average of 14/100, an increase of six points over 2019.

To achieve this result, the Ministry of Finance has consulted the people through seminars organized by the Center for Development and Integration (CDI) on the draft on budget estimate.

Notably, the Ministry of Finance has launched the State Budget Public Portal (address: https://ckns.mof.gov.vn), which provides timely and complete budget data and information and support convenient exploitation and lookup in different information dimensions and has been willing to receive comments from organizations and individuals to state budget estimates.

The Ministry of Finance will continue to perform disclosure of the state budget and guide, inspect and supervise localities and ministries and agencies to strictly implement the publicity in accordance with the State Budget Law.

In order to create maximum conditions for people to access and exploit state budget information, the State Budget Public Portal will be upgraded toward scientific data arrangement and electronic operation.