Tracking Progress, Closing Gaps: The State of Fiscal Transparency in 2025
This analysis of the Global Data Barometer public finance thematic cluster was compiled by Aura Martínez, Senior Consultant for the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency and Raúl Castellanos Data Consultant for the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency.
Fiscal transparency is a core component of democratic accountability and sustainable development. Without access to structured and open public finance data, citizens and institutions are left in the dark about how public resources are allocated, spent, and justified.
The Global Data Barometer (GDB) 2025 offers a comparative view of fiscal data ecosystems in 43 countries, primarily in low- and middle-income contexts. The Public Finance (PF) cluster examines how governments both regulate and deliver fiscal information, assessing not only whether legal frameworks exist (governance) but also whether data is made available in open and usable formats (availability).
The GDB, allows for a layered understanding of transparency, highlighting persistent challenges, emerging champions, and disconnects between policy and practice, contributing to building healthier data ecosystems where laws, systems, and standards align to make public finance data accessible and impactful.
Governance Gains, Availability Lag
The average global score across the GDB PF cluster in 2025 is 59.23, a notable improvement from the previous cycle. When comparing the average PF cluster score for 2025 to the same set of countries in the 2023 edition, we observe a notable improvement: the average increased from 47.54 in 2023 to 62.55 in 2025. This progress is largely driven by gains in the Governance pillar, where the average score now stands at 65.37. Countries have improved their legal and institutional mandates for publishing fiscal information, including laws requiring the timely publication of budget proposals, enacted budgets, and audit reports.
Yet the Availability pillar tells a different story. Despite legal advancements, the average score for actual publication of data, particularly in structured, machine-readable formats, is only 53.09. This suggests a widening gap between formal frameworks and data usability, where governments may meet legal obligations but fall short in making data accessible or actionable.
This pattern is also evident when comparing scores from 2023 to 2025 for the same set of countries that participated in both editions. The Availability Score increased from an average of 50.31 to 58.31, representing a 15.9% increase. Meanwhile, the Governance Score rose from 46.68 to 66.89, a more substantial 43.3% increase.
Regional Patterns and Standouts
Latin America and the Caribbean feature strong performers like Brazil (91.53 in the PF score), and Guatemala (92.16 availability score).
These achievements reflect institutional efforts and regional momentum, but they coexist with persistent issues: data appears only in PDFs, lacks classification granularity, or is outdated.
Sub-Saharan Africa presents a similar contrast. South Africa scores 100 in governance and 80.35 in availability, and Ghana and Mozambique also reach the top governance score, but several countries remain below average due to limited open data infrastructure or incomplete disclosure.
The Middle East and North Africa include only two countries in the sample, but Morocco stands out, scoring 95 in governance and 59.25 in availability.
BTS vs. GDB: Two lenses on transparency
A crosswalk with the Open Budget Survey’s Budget Transparency Score (BTS) reveals important differences:
- Some countries score relatively high in BTS but lower in GDB’s availability, reflecting strong content but weak format and usability.
- Conversely, countries that perform better in GDB’s availability measures show advanced technical practices even where document comprehensiveness may lag.
This suggests transparency is often pursued through separate channels—legal/documentary compliance versus technical open data—and rarely achieved in full.
Income Group Dynamics
Income level alone does not determine a country’s transparency. While upper-middle-income countries have the highest average BTS score at 58.6, low-income countries lag behind with an average of 39.2, showing a narrower range of performance. Interestingly, high-income countries average 49.2, falling short of expectations—potentially due to lower engagement with global transparency benchmarks. Notable examples such as South Africa and Guatemala, both outside the high-income category, demonstrate that political will and effective institutional coordination play a more critical role than economic status in driving transparency outcomes.
What’s Next? Recommendations for Strengthening Fiscal Data Ecosystems
The 2025 data tells us that change has been happening—but not fast enough, not evenly, and not irreversibly. To close the gap between law and practice, and between availability and usability, we offer the following recommendations:
- Mandate structured and open formats in law
While many countries have introduced legal provisions for budget data disclosure, few explicitly require that data be published in machine-readable formats. Legal reforms should include format, frequency, and licensing standards. - Invest in classification systems and data infrastructure
Public finance data should not just be available but disaggregated and intelligible. Countries must adopt international classifications (economic, administrative, functional, programmatic) and develop open data platforms that allow for data export, visualization, and reuse. - Promote consistency across budget documents
Even where countries publish several of the eight key budget documents, these are often inconsistent in scope or formatting. Encouraging coherence across documents—and promoting their centralization in open data portals would enhance usability. - Encourage peer learning and regional momentum
Country champions such as Brazil, Guatemala, South Africa, and Morocco can share tools, lessons, and platforms with neighboring countries. Regional initiatives and communities of practice are key for promoting scalable approaches and building institutional capacity. - Use assessments as reform entry points
GDB and OBS assessments are not just measurement tools—they are opportunities to engage governments in dialogue. Ministries of finance and planning can use the results to identify gaps, coordinate with ICT and legal teams, and set priorities for action. - Close the PDF gap
A significant share of public finance data is still published only in PDF. Countries should adopt open formats CSV, JSON, XLSX) as default and make bulk downloads. - Maintain updated and comparable datasets
Regular participation in global assessments allows benchmarking, tracks setbacks, and sustains momentum.
Conclusion
The 2025 GDB PF cluster reveals steady progress and structural limitations. Legal frameworks are advancing, but full transparency depends on timely, structured, and accessible data.
Countries treating transparency as systemic, not symbolic, are laying the path forward. The GDB PF cluster will continue to support them: as a measurement tool, a repository of good practices, and a springboard for deeper reforms in the service of equity and development.