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, liabilities, and contingent obligations, as well as revenues and expenditures authorised in an annual budget i.e. it includes all stocks as well as flows, whereas stocks often do not feature in budget documents (aside from debt).

Fiscal transparency includes fiscal activities undertaken outside the budget sector but within the government sector e.g. by autonomous government agencies or extra-budgetary funds that may not be reported as part of the budget sector.

Fiscal transparency also includes ‘quasi-fiscal activities’ undertaken outside the government sector by public corporations, the central bank, or (sometimes) by private corporations i.e. activities that are fiscal in character but that are not financed by government but by the corporations themselves, such as subsidised lending or subsidised service delivery by public corporations, or construction of public infrastructure by companies developing natural resources (Reference: Background Paper prepared for the Open Government Partnership-GIFT Fiscal Openness Working Group).

On the other hand, “Budget transparency” may refer to the narrower budget sector (e.g. ‘budgetary central government), any may not include the budgets of autonomous agencies, or extra-budgetary funds. The term may also refer to a wider concept e.g. the International Budget Partnership’s ‘Open Budget Survey’, which includes some questions on assets and liabilities but which focuses on 8 key reports centred around the budget. The term budget transparency is generally not used to refer to as wide a concept as fiscal transparency.

Fiscal openness refers to fiscal transparency together with direct public participation in fiscal policy formulation and implementation. Following the 2008 financial crisis, international fiscal transparency initiatives have increasingly incorporated public participation as a key element in order to promote improved policy formulation and implementation, and to strengthen accountability for fiscal management (see below).

The 1997 Asian financial crisis first prompted the international community to set out a comprehensive codification of what is meant by fiscal transparency. The IMF’s Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency, adopted in 1998 (and revised in 2001 and 2007), comprised four pillars: clarity of roles and responsibilities; open budget processes; public availability of information; and assurances of integrity. The Code was accompanied by a Fiscal Transparency Manual, which together with the Code provided the basis for an IMF initiative to assess country practices against the Code - the so-called Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC). By the end of 2006 around half of the Fund's member countries had undertaken a Fiscal ROSC, nearly all of which were published on the Fund's web site.