Fiscal transparency Fiscal transparency Fiscal transparency refers to the publication of information on how governments raise, spend, and manage public resources. More specifically, it means publication of high quality information on how governments raise taxes, borrow, spend, invest, and manage public assets and liabilities. Fiscal transparency includes public reporting on the past, present, and future state of public finances. Fiscal policies have critical impacts on economic, social and environmental outcomes in all countries at all levels of development. Fiscal transparency is sometimes used synonymously with budget transparency. However, fiscal transparency is in principle wider than budget transparency. It includes all public assets,
Fiscal transparency 2012 reviewed the state of fiscal transparency in the wake of the global financial crisis and proposed a series of improvements to existing international fiscal transparency standards and monitoring arrangements. The 2012 paper laid the groundwork for the IMF’s new Fiscal Transparency Code and Fiscal Transparency Evaluation that replaced the 2007 Code and the related fiscal module of the ROSC. The new Code covers four key elements of fiscal transparency: For each of the principles defined in the Code, the new Code differentiates between basic, good, and advanced practices in order to distinguish between different levels of performance and capacity