30^th January 2018, Skopje – Today, Ministry of Finance representative took part in the presentation of the Open Budget Index 2017, according to data, gathered by  31^st  December 2016.

As of June 2017 until today, Ministry of Finance has made 12 crucial changes for increasing the transparency, by publishing data, which have not been available so far to the public:

1. Reports on budget execution by budget users have been published on monthly basis;
2. In addition, reports on execution of municipal budgets are published on quarterly basis;
3. Quarterly report on execution of the general government budget is published.
4. Semi-annual report on execution of the state budget has been upgraded, containing for the first time, data on all budget users.
5. All arrears of all budget users, public enterprises and municipalities as of 31^st May inclusive, have been published.
6. For the first time, since the independence of the Republic of Macedonia, data on income distribution of citizens have been published, based upon data of PRO.
7. Citizen’s Budget has been published based upon the data of the 2017 Supplementary Budget.
8. Citizen’s Budget has also been published based upon the data of the Draft Budget. Citizen’s Budgets have also been prepared by all ministries for their separate budgets.
9. For the first time since the independence of Macedonia, Ministry of Finance has organized a public debate about the Budget, before its consideration by the Government.  The debate was attended by NGOs, experts, chambers, unions, as well as representatives from international financial partners of the Republic of Macedonia.
10. Legal amendments were made, by which all budget users and public enterprises are obliged to publish their annual budget reports on their websites, so they can be available to the public.
11. Budget users and public enterprises are also obliged to publish all public contracts and annexes on the electronic system for public procurement,- e-procurement,  thus being available to the public.
12. Website of the Ministry of Finance was changed so as for public to be provided better access to the respective reports and information. At present, all data are available in excel format.

These, as MoF spokesperson Jovana Avramovska said, are 12 crucial changes, made to the end of increasing transparency in the public finance-related operations. She stressed that Minister of Finance together with the staff worked on making the data public on daily basis, being one of the key priorities of both the Ministry and the Government.

Transparency, as she said, has numerous benefits, such as the pressure from the public about proper spending of citizens’ money, greater responsibility and control of the power holders, as well as available data and information, which can be thus analyzed by the experts and the scientists, the economic sectors, as well as the investigative journalists.
 What I can announce is that Ministry of Finance will not stop here, 2018 will be marked with even greater pro-active transparency for the purpose of publishing as much information as possible, being important for the public, she concluded.

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