Over a decade MEJN has been a country researcher for the International Budget Partnership. The IBP conducts a regular survey every two years to assessment openness of the Government’s budget process. The survey looks at how transparent is the budget processes in Malawi, Involvement of key stakeholders in the processes through which consultative means, availability of budget information tom all relevant stakeholders, accessibility of budgetary documents by the general citizenry, through which means are the budget documents accessible. These are but some areas that the survey looks at. The survey then gives rating basing on such parameters.
The survey has become an advocacy tool for MEJN which seeks to promote transparency in the national budget processes. The latest survey was done in 2019 and the findings were presented to the Government (Treasury) in July 2020. Since MEJN started undertaking this study, the transparency of the Malawi budget has been progressively improving. Budget information including documents is readily available and is accessible through various media. Government through the ministry of Finance has been making efforts to involve all relevant stakeholders in budget processes by conducting pre budget consultations targeting different stakeholders. With support by other development partners, Parliament has also established the long awaited and much needed budget office. This serves a lot in as far as accessing some key budget documents is concern since the office acts as a focal point for such processes and it is a one stop centre for key budget information including making sure that there is always Citizen Budget produced after the main budget is passed.
