GUIDE on Advancing Fiscal Transparency for Development

1 Fiscal policy is the use of the level and composition of the general government and public sector spending and revenue—and the related accumulation of government assets and liabilities—to achieve such goals as the stabilization of the economy, the reallocation of resources, and the redistribution of income (IMF Government Finance Statistics (GFS) Manual, 2014). [...] The legislature needs to have a full picture of the previous fiscal year, both from a financial and non-financial performance or outcomes perspective, to scrutinize the executive’s financial management from planning, to the allocation of resources to declared priorities, to the evaluation of the results these decisions generated. [...] 22 GUIDE on Advancing Fiscal Transparency for Development 5 Fiscal transparency norms and standards The potential beneficial impact of fiscal transparency in fiscal matters has over the years led to the development of a multiplicity of international norms and standards on the matter. [...] This prompted the development in 2012 of the High-Level Principles on Fiscal Transparency, Participation and Accountability, 10 principles that were ‘…intended to guide policy makers and all other stakeholders in fiscal policy in their efforts to improve fiscal transparency, participation and accountability, and to help promote improvements in the coverage, consistency and coherence of the existin. [...] Hierarchy of principles, norms and standards, and assessments of country practices GIFT’s contribution to norms and standards is illustrated in the diagram below where the GIFT High-Level Principles on Fiscal Transparency, Participation and Accountability sit at the top of a hierarchy of principles, norms and standards, and assessments of country practices.