Open Budget Index

The Open Budget Survey assesses whether the central government in each country surveyed makes eight key budget documents available to the public, as well as whether the data contained in these documents is comprehensive, timely, and useful. The Survey uses internationally accepted criteria to assess each country’s budget transparency developed by multilateral organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic

Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). The scores on 95 of the 125 Open Budget Survey questions are used to calculate objective scores and rankings of each surveyed country’s relative transparency. These composite scores constitute the Open Budget Index (OBI), the world’s only independent and comparative measure of budget transparency.

Kazakhstan’s score is 48 out of 100, which is higher than the average score of 43 for all the 100 countries surveyed but is lower than the scores of its neighbors Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Mongolia. Kazakhstan’s score indicates that the government provides the public with only some information on the national government’s budget and financial activities during the course of the budget year. This makes it challenging for citizens to hold the government accountable for its management of the public’s money.

Kazakhstan’s OBI 2012 score of 48 is an improvement in comparison to its score of 38 on the OBI 2010.