EXPENDITURE TRANSPARENCY

It is impossible to ensure proper management of natural resource wealth by looking exclusively at revenues. Transparent and accountable management and expenditure of public funds is essential to addressing the poverty, corruption and autocracy that too often plague resource rich countries.

Citizens in resource rich countries must have the data and the tools to assess the revenues flowing into their government's coffers. But the revenue information produced from exercises like EITI is only useful insofar as citizens and policymakers can use it to analyze the management, prioritization and spending of these funds for economic growth and human development.

Revenue Watch directs its expertise, resources and research at both revenue transparency and expenditure transparency. While our initial efforts were focused on the revenue side, as the political momentum in efforts like EITI and PWYP directed a much-needed spotlight on extractive industry payments and government receipts, RWI and our local partners have widened this focus to include government budget processes and spending. The adoption of revenue transparency standards in many countries has resulted in more data being produced and disclosed, and more demand for attention to government spending and development outcomes. Thus Revenue Watch promotes not only on transparency in resource revenue payments and government receipts, but also on the accountable and transparent management and expenditure of those revenues. The International Budget Project is a primary partner in this aspect of our work, working with RWI to build the capacity of monitors in resource-rich countries to follow-the-money all the way through the public spending chain.

RWI's local partners are involved in wide variety of expenditure research, monitoring and advocacy, ranging from a study of informal payments and corruption in the education sector in Kazakhstan and an analysis of the social payments made by Mexico's state oil company to local governments in producing regions, to assistance in Iraq's effort establish an independent budget office and training for Angolan journalists seeking to cover budget issues.

Several new RWI initiatives aim to deepen knowledge and practical tools for helping countries and citizens translate resource wealth into prosperity. We have partnered with prominent economists Professor Paul Collier and Professor Tony Venables at Oxford University to create case studies and an applied policy manual on management, expenditure and the maximization of commodities windfalls for development impact.

In January 2008, RWI launched a multi-country initiative to build sub-national government capacity at the regional and local levels to effectively manage extractive revenues for growth and development. This effort also seeks to equip local civil society groups to monitor public finances and participate in public spending decisions.

Several new RWI research projects are also focused on public spending and the economic impacts of fiscal transparency, including a comparative study of the use of commodity windfalls in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia. RWI's team of economists are spearheading a number of programmatic efforts to demonstrate the development benefits of transparent and accountable revenue management and expenditures.