Finance Minister, Mr. Amr Al-Garhy, announces:

·         Financial transparency is a pivotal requirement for getting citizens involved in budget preparation, for enhancing accountability and controlling public expenditure.

·         In a bid to improve financial transparency, Ministry of Social Solidarity adopts new technique for exercising community accountability and manages to redeem 22 million EGP.

·         A protocol is signed with Ministry of Education to teach "Child Budget" in high schools.

·         The system of community evaluation cards for citizens is applied and techniques for measuring government performance and service quality are employed.

On the fringe of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) Group's 2018 Spring meetings, held currently in Washington D C, Finance Minister, Mr. Al-Garhy, has taken part with his counterparts in MENA region in a round table session on financial transparency. Vice minister of finance for fiscal policies and institutional development, Mr. Ahmed Kouchouck, and head of Macro Fiscal Unit (MFU) and general coordinator for the transparency initiative, Ms. Sara Eid, have also participated in the discussion.

Finance minister, Al-Garhy, stresses that despite the current challenges encountered by the ME region, the Egyptian government strongly believes in the importance of financial transparency in improving public expenditure along with comprehensive reforms. Transparency is not a goal in itself, but an important means for citizens' participation, accountability enhancement, expenditure adjustment and for raising standards of living, he notes. 

He adds that exercising transparency and disclosing additional data on general budgets help in initiating dialogues with citizens so as to specify best effective ways for spending public money. He also referres to his meetings with high level delegations of investors. 

Egypt is nearly treading on its 4^th successive year in its financial transparency plans and citizens' engagement. Over the past three years, the government adopted significant measures to enhance financial transparency and disclosure measures, such as introducing collaborative budget, accountability and controlling techniques, in addition to the integration of many communicative tools via electronic networks and other means in order to reach out to all community classes and boost citizens confidence, the minister notes.

Ministry of Finance is working earnestly to publish  in a timely manner main reports that provide comprehensive budget-related details, such as the preliminary financial statement, the Citizen Budget and the semi-annual financial statement to get citizens informed and updated with the budget preparatory cycle, highlights the minister.

An interactive electronic website has been launched by the ministry via social networks to enable citizens to comment, review, analyze and save financial reports, he adds.

In the same context, Mr. Al-Garhy has demonstrated some outcomes resulting from citizens' feedback and the application of accountability measures in terms of performance efficiency of the financial management and public expenditure. He referred to the allocation of around 12 million EGP for Takaful and Karama social schemes in Assiout governorate, and  of nearly 10 million EGP for programs of  the Social Fund for Development (SFD), in addition to the efforts exerted to bridge confidence gap among citizens, government  and civil society organizations.

All public entities and ministries are working collaboratively and in coordination with other non-governmental organizations interested in upgrading public services in order to exercise financial transparency in better communicative ways with all citizens, confirms the minister.

Commenting on the ministry's future plans, Mr. Al-Garhy points out that their short-term objective is to structure the transparency initiative within an institutional framework in the ministry, confirming that the government works on improving its budget transparency score in 2019 Open Budget Survey. 

The ministry is also keen to collaborate with other ministries such as the Ministry of Education through a protocol agreement to teach "Child Budget" in the different early stages of education and in high schools, as well.  The ministry also seeks to cooperate with the National Council of Women and civil society organizations such as the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies to reach highest levels of sustainable development appreciated by citizens, he adds.

On the medium-term, the ministry seeks to introduce mechanisms to apply collaborative budget in five governorates, and shall hold meetings and conferences across the nation to discuss important projects required for improving standards of living there. On the long-term, the ministry aims to apply community evaluation cards for citizens and to introduce other techniques for measuring government performance and upgrading service quality, notes the minister.

On the level of budget, the ministry will hold discussion sessions on steps of budget preparation, where all community members and civil organizations can voice their opinions and needs. The budget policy shall be also discussed thoroughly by the legislative authority before being presented in its final form to the executive authority, mentions the minister.

Mr. Al-Garhy concluded his speech by underling the importance of improving financial transparency and community involvement to boost citizens' confidence as well as to attract international credit rating agencies, which in turn will encourage other neighboring countries to follow the same path, to share the Egyptian experience and to seek mutual cooperation.

He finally thanked WB and IBP officials for organizing such significant session and for providing them with the opportunity to share their different experiences and challenges related to financial transparency and citizens' involvement.