Budget Watch – Institute of Public Policy

Budget Watch, a partnership between the Institute of Public Policy and ISEG (University of Lisbon) since 2013, is a project that aims to analyze the State Budget Proposal from the perspective of rigor, transparency and budgetary responsibility.

The analysis is exclusively technical, independent and objective, in light of good international reporting practices of the budget process, on issues such as:

The Budget rigor and responsibility;
Transparency and quality of the budgetary procedure;
The ability to control public consumption expenditure, especially in the most relevant sectors;
The sharing of efforts between Central, Regional and Local Administrations in the containment of public expenditure;
The transparency of flows between the Public Administrative and Business Sector;
The way future responsibilities (Public-Private Partnerships, guarantees, pensions) are properly considered.

2022 State Budget analysis

Budget Watch has returned to its thirtheenth edition with the State Budget review for 2022.

The main activity of the project lies in the analysis of the State Budget by the Budget Watch’s Scientific Advisory Council from the perspective of 10 principles of budgetary responsibility, through the completion of a Questionnaire. The answers are compiled resulting in the IPP/ISEG Budget Index, a index from 0 to 100, of the rigor and transparency of successive Budgets.

Council’s review is complemented by a report prepared by an IPP/ISEG team (the Budget Watch Report), which brings together most of the relevant information and provides a first examination of the State Budget Proposal. A summary version with the executive summary and recommendations is then made publicly available.

In addition to the Budget Watch, the Institute of Public Policy prepares a Citizens Budget, which aims to explain the State Budget to citizens, and is the portuguese representative for the Open Budget Index, an initiative of the International Budget Partnership (IBP) to analyze transparency in more than 100 countries.

The Scientific Advisory Council has as members: