International Budget Partnership

“You can have transparency, but so what?”

At the @IMFNews Town Hall in Bangkok, @OpenBudgets Yuna Farhan asked Kristalina Georgieva how the IMF could better support civil society, oversight institutions and government reformers who hold budgets to account.

Her response: transparency needs accountability mechanisms behind it—and civil society brings ideas the IMF can help governments adopt.

Today, we launch the #OBS2025 Asia results, measuring transparency, public participation and oversight together.

🕑 14:00 Bangkok | 07:00 GMT
#AM2026Thailand #BudgetAccountability
@IbpIndonesia

From budget data to medicines on the shelf.

Why don’t essential health commodities reliably reach public health facilities in Lindi, Mtwara and Morogoro?

That question guided our work in Dar es Salaam from 5–8 October as we launched the next phase of IBP’s @EU_Commission-funded Collaborating for Open and Accountable Budgeting (COAB) program in Tanzania.

With @policy_F, @sikika1 and civil society organizations from the three regions, we identified potential supply bottlenecks and shared approaches to tracking medicines and monitoring health services.

We also met development partners to discuss Tanzania’s Open Budget Survey results and opportunities to support wider public finance reforms.

Next, partners will gather district-level evidence to identify where the budget system is falling short and advocate for change locally and nationally.

Thank you to our partners, @EU_Commission and the EU Delegation to Tanzania for supporting this work.

#OpenBudgets

On 2 and 3 November, we co-hosted a peer learning exchange in Zagreb with the Institute of Public Finance. Civil society groups from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia compared how they assess local budgets and help residents have a say in spending decisions.

Partners explored how budget research can help residents track spending, hold local officials accountable and learn from peers across the region.

The @EU_Commission funded this exchange through the Building Alliances for Budget Accountability (BABA) initiative. #WesternBalkans

When a clinic runs out of essential medicines, the people who rely on it know what that shortage costs them. Their experience should guide decisions about what the next health budget pays for.

As our Senior Program Officer Andrés Ponce Morales points out, civil society can help communities check what funding their clinic was promised, find out how much arrived and ask health officials what they will do about any shortfall.

What would you want the people setting your local health budget to hear from your community?

#HealthBudgets #PublicParticipation #BudgetAccountability

Why do clinics run short of medicines that governments have budgeted for? At our Nairobi exchange, partners shared how they trace shortages back to funding and purchasing decisions.

Read three lessons on following the money. internationalbudget.org/following-the-…

#HealthBudgets #HealthForAll