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Open Budget Cluster Applauds Rivers State Government on Proactive Disclosure of Budget Document

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3 May 2021 8:38 AM GMT
Open Budget Cluster Applauds Rivers State Government on Proactive Disclosure of Budget Document
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The open budget cluster commends the efforts of the proactive disclosure of the States budgets documents in their website. It’s the first time this administration will make its annual budget public. Its shows the state is ready to allow citizens engagement with the state government. This is the first step in embracing the culture of […]

The open budget cluster commends the efforts of the proactive disclosure of the States budgets documents in their website. It’s the first time this administration will make its annual budget public. Its shows the state is ready to allow citizens engagement with the state government. This is the first step in embracing the culture of openness and transparent governance. Open Budget cluster uses this opportunity to commend the Government for heading to the various advocacy, engagements calls for transparency in running the state budgetary processes.. This is a step in the right direction.

It will be recalled that for several years, the budget of Rivers State government, has been shrouded in secrecy and opaqueness and has generated a lot of controversies amongst development and public analyst, opinion leaders, academia, financial experts, Civil Society Organisations and other stakeholders as to why such an important and vital documents that contains governments expenditures, forecast and fiscal policies should be kept away from the public knowledge for so long.


In the spirit of this new found openness and disclosure, we call on the state government to also make other fiscal and financial documents (which are by the way public documents) available, accessible to the public. The process leading to the formation and formulation of the budget should also be made inclusive and participatory. It is believed that to uphold and promotes democracy and good governance governments must be open, transparent and accountable as well as participatory and inclusive.


We therefore, call on the Rivers state government not to relapse after taking this giant step but to continue to embrace open and inclusive governance in order to entrench democratic values in the state.
This we believe is one way the government can rebuild trust and gain the confidence of the people.
Thanks

Green Isaac
Program officer

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