International Budget Partnership

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) believes in a world where all citizens claim the right to understand and influence how public money — their money — is raised and spent. To achieve this vision, we collaborate with civic groups, government champions and influential international organizations to ensure governments are held accountable for the ways they raise and spend public funds -- with the ultimate aim of improving service delivery, strengthening democratic governance, and supporting inclusive development.

IBP works with local partners around the world to use public budgets as a powerful tool for social good and accountability, and advocate for policies that reduce poverty and inequality. Leveraging our combined skills and networks, we are a powerful, united voice for more transparent governance, equitable distribution of resources and policies that alleviate poverty. Leading the field of fiscal transparency and accountability for more than 20 years, IBP has taken on the challenge of making public finance systems worldwide more open and accountable by:
• Incubating and strengthening budget-focused civil society institutions in countries around the world;
• collaborating with civil society partners and other accountability actors within countries to achieve measurable improvements in how public money is collected and spent on delivering critical public services to poor and marginalized communities;
• producing research and analysis on country budget systems, processes, and policies and the impact of civil society engagement in budgeting; and
• engaging international and country stakeholders to promote improved budget systems, practices, policies, and outcomes.

IBP is the world’s leading non-profit organization bringing together the skills of economists, policy analysts and advocates to ensure governments are responsible stewards of public funds. We have core expertise in public finance and budget processes. We produce research and analysis on country budget systems, processes and policies. We identify opportunities for reform — and push to make them happen.
IBP also has proven methods to strengthen local change agents. We equip civil society partners with the skills and knowledge to conduct budget analysis, monitoring and advocacy that increases the public’s ability to influence public budget discussions and hold their governments accountable.
Our exceptionally broad network of partners multiplies our effectiveness. Two decades of results and quality work give IBP credibility and strong relationships at grassroots, national and international levels. This allows us to bridge the distance between citizens’ groups and the powerful finance institutions they cannot easily access. That space — where citizens and powerful institutions meet — is where sustainable change happens.

At the core of IBP’s vision is the growth of civic organizations in the global south that specialize in budget analysis and advocacy to diversify and strengthen the field of fiscal transparency and accountability. To that end, IBP helped create a Learning Network comprised of 40 leading budget organizations from around the world, that collaborate on key advocacy initiatives and share learnings with peers. We are dedicated to continuing our work to deepen the technical capacity of Learning Network members and broaden the pool of organizations working on budgets, with the aim that these groups develop the organizational strengths required to lead the field.
In addition, over the past 20 years, IBP has played an instrumental role in putting budget transparency on the global agenda and has influenced the norms and standards of international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Open Government Partnership. Before, there was little recognition by international institutions of the need and importance of fiscal transparency in countries. However, IBP has pioneered new standards of openness by helping introduce concepts, for example, the need for “citizens’ budgets” – documents that are understandable by the public. The IMF revised its fiscal transparency code in 2006 in part due to the launch of IBP’s Open Budget Survey (the world’s only regular cross-country assessment of fiscal transparency, public participation and oversight) which called on governments to produce citizens’ budgets. The IMF modified its code again in 2014 to emphasize the importance of public participation in budget processes, largely due to IBP’s urging.
Moving forward, IBP will increasingly focus on promoting participation as a key enabler of budget accountability, both directly and through looking at how transparency can facilitate participation, and how citizen engagement with other formal institutions can strengthen budget oversight. Our leading-edge approaches to securing more inclusive and accountable budgeting include investigating the issues of budget credibility (the ability of governments to meet their spending and revenue targets) as well as government responsiveness to formal audit recommendations. Tax policy and how it can exacerbate inequalities is also a topic of growing interest. Each of our approaches involve bolstering the capacities of civic groups to engage government throughout the budget cycle not only to improve government accountability as they raise and spend public funds, but also to achieve measurable impact on public finance systems and transform lives throughout the developing world.