 Good morning and thank you all for joining us from your various locations, whether you tuned in from Fiji, the Pacific region or from the world, your time is valuable and we thank you for choosing to spend it with us this morning. On behalf of International Ideas Original Office for Asia and the Pacific, I would like to welcome you all to the fourth webinar of the Democratic Development and Melanesia webinar series for 2023. We would also like to welcome our panelists and of course you our participants. Now as part of International Ideas Asia and the Pacific regional programs work plan for 2023, these webinars aim to provide opportunities to citizens of the Melanesian region to take part and substantive discussions surrounding democracy in Melanesia. It is also intended that through the webinars, citizens of Melanesian countries who participate may gain knowledge on the subject matter and on the experiences of other countries. This will in turn enhance debates on institutional and procedural involvement in their respective democracies. Now the fourth webinar titled Democratic Development and Melanesia webinar series is a civil society budget monitoring. Now citizens tend to take interest in or engage in political processes if they feel that it will be beneficial to them and rightfully so. Budget monitoring is the process by which citizens observe and analyze public documents during the budget formulation and approval stages of the budget cycle. This monitoring is done in order to determine and raise awareness about how public funds are allocated. However, in the rush to spend money and deliver services, accountability is often compromised, increasing opportunities for corruption and mismanagement. Civil society groups and activists must be armed with and trained on the tools they need to demand that governments be transparent about where the money is going, how much is being spent and who is benefiting. They must also be in a position to influence future allocation of funds. This webinar will have two speakers who will deliver their presentation first. By the way, these are the House rules and then the audience can ask their questions after the speakers have presented. To do this, members of the audience can use the raise hand feature to ask questions and the audience is reminded to keep their mic off during the webinar and to only turn it on when asking questions during the question and answer session. However, if you're in a position where you're not able to use your mic or if your mic is not working, you can pose your questions through the chat feature. Now before we proceed any further, just note that this session is being recorded. Also, and as with all webinars with international idea, I have a disclaimer that I'm required to read out. The statements, views or opinions expressed in this presentation do not necessarily represent the institutional position of international idea. It's one of advisors or its council of member states. Now if you haven't already done so, I'd like to humbly request that everyone please put their mics on mute as I introduced our first speaker for today and that's Miss Lucia Lange-Lebu. Miss Lange-Lebu graduated from the University of the South Pacific in 2014 with a Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts majoring in Journalism. She joined Marshatum Lawyers in 2015 before joining the Citizens Constitutional Forum in 2018 as a policy and research officer. One year later, she became their program manager, a role that she has flourished in till date. And it's no wonder she has a passion for international law human rights, democracy and developmental work. And as such has received training on human rights standards, instruments, mechanisms and frameworks that are available internationally and locally. She's contributed national submissions on legislative reforms reflecting on good governance principles and democratic processes and values monitoring and evaluating the impact of human rights activities, public participation and policy development. While working for CCF, she's been involved in the program design of project activities focused on supporting democratic processes and civic engagement. In particular, the conceptualization of activities within CCF's parliamentary support project, particularly in the capacity building of communities on parliamentary engagement advocacy and civil education. She's also been heavily involved in carrying out CCF's trainings and workshops on parliamentary processes, human rights, constitution, freedom of speech, UN Universal Periodic Review Framework. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is just a name of you. Ladies and gentlemen, our first speaker for today, Ms Lucia Lanilemo. Will it be nice to everyone? Hello to everyone joining in this webinar. I hope you can all hear and see me clearly. Thank you. Special thank you to idea for organizing this webinar. It's a very important topic for Fiji as well as other countries that participate in the monitoring of budget systems. I'd also like to take this moment on behalf of CCF to acknowledge international budget partnership that is represented by Ms. Suad Hassan with us today on this panel. Before I begin with the presentation, I'd just like to provide a brief background of the Citizens' Constitutional Forum. The Citizens' Constitutional Forum is a non-governmental organization with about 20 years, over 20 years in experience in community education and advocacy on human rights, good governance, democracy, multiculturalism, and rule of law. CCF works with communities in educating about the principles of these thematic areas that I've just mentioned for their active participation and in lobbying policies to ensure democracy and rule of law in human rights are observed and protected. Since CCF's establishment in about 1991, CCF's vision is to make Fiji a nation where people live together in equality, just this peace respecting the rule of law that guarantees democracy. That's just a brief background about CCF. Now I'd like to shed a bit of light on the work that CCF has been doing in partnership with international budget partnership. The reason that I'd like to explain a bit about this is because this partnership has been critical in our monitoring of Fiji's budget system. So CCF has been part of this research called the Open Budget Survey since about 2008. When this survey actually started, CCF began with a monitoring of hard copies of budget books which were released by the Ministry of Finance and then through monitoring of government websites on the availability of budget documents. So we actually moved from monitoring hard copy documents since 2008 to specifically documents made available online on official websites from the government. Now the Open Budget Survey or in short OBS is known to be the world's only independent fact-based research instrument and I'm sure Swad from IPP will shed more light on this. This particular survey is internationally accepted to assess public access to central government budget information, formal opportunities for public participation in national budget processes as well as looking into the role of budget oversight institutions such as our own Office of Auditor General. The survey also helps local civil society organizations assess with their government on the reporting and use of public funds. So the latest survey that was released for Fiji which IPP worked with CCF on was done for the financial year 2020-2020 until 2020-21 sorry 2021. So the survey was released for the year 2021. I'll move straight into the three key areas that OBS focuses on. So the three key areas that this survey focuses on is our transparency, budget oversight and public participation. In terms of transparency for this arm of the survey it measures public access to information on how the central government raises and spends public resources. This is also an assessment done on the online, on the availability of online materials, the timeliness in which these materials are provided and how comprehensive these materials are. So when I'm speaking about materials we are actually focusing on eight key budget documents and these are the pre-budget statement, the executive budget proposal, the enacted budget, citizen's budget, in-year reports, media reports, year-end reports and audit report. I'll explain a bit further on what these documents entail as we go through this presentation. But continuing in continuing with this first key element transparency we need to understand that a transparency for a country that scores about 61 or above in transparency this means that that country is publishing enough materials to support an informed public debate on the budget. So from the survey if you see that a country has scored more than 61 that means that there are enough budgets provided online on the website to keep members of the public informed about their budget processes or the budget content for that particular country. For Fiji for the 2021 survey Fiji scored a transparency score of 37 out of 100 and Fiji ranks about 79 out of 120 countries. So in saying that 37 out of 100 yes Fiji has a lot more work to do so that we can actually be identified as giving enough material sufficient materials to the public to be informed about the budget systems and the actions taken by the government in terms of execution of budget processes. For Fiji the recommendations that the recommendations that came out of this survey in terms of transparency was to improve on budget transparency in terms of publishing the pre-budget statement and in-year reports online in a timely manner and to produce and publish the citizens budget media review and year and report online in a timely manner. The comprehensiveness of the audit report and enacted budget were also issues that were raised through this survey. So just a fit on the eight key budget statements. The pre-budget statement which I had mentioned this is a document that discloses the broad parameters of fiscal policies in advance of the executive budget proposal so it's a document that outlines the government's economic forecast anticipated revenue expenditures and debt. I think just to give a bit more clearer definition of these eight key budget documents I'll just share a screen of brief definitions of these eight key budget documents instead of me having to explain to each and every one of these documents. I might bore some of you and I hope some of you don't fall off to see me. So I'll just share screen now. Please just bear with me as I share screen. Can you all see that? I hope it's clear. Okay so these are actually the eight key budget documents and full disclosure this beautiful document here this really helpful and insightful document was put together by an international budget partnership and it's a very user-friendly document which CCF can share with the participants who are interested. So you can see that the pre-budget statement which I was explaining the definitions of the eight key budget documents are their pre-budget statement the executive's budget proposal. So the executive's budget proposal is for is basically the proposed budget which is put by the state. So for for Fiji for instance this is the proposed budget that the government releases in parliament. So recently that was just in I believe in the last within the within last month or so where the minister of finance announced the budget proposal in parliament before the debate took place. So that is actually the pre-budget statement for our Fiji participants. Sorry that is actually the executive's budget proposal. Then we have the enacted budget. This is actually the budget that that has been enacted in parliament so approved by legislature and then and then enacted by the various institutions. We also have the citizens budget which is a simpler version of the enacted budget. It is it is a less technical document which is user-friendly and allows a member of the public to have a better understanding or a fair understanding of what has been approved in the budget or what has been included in the enacted budget. Then you have the in-year reports the as you can see there the media review year end report and the audit reports. I hope that you are all able to read these brief definitions of the eight key budget documents which which the open budget survey focuses on in its assessment. I will just stop sharing Marie. So that was for the element of transparency in this in the open budget survey. Moving on to the second key element of the survey we have the the budget over signed. So for budget oversight this is where the survey assesses the role that the legislatures and the supreme audit institutions or the office of the office of the office of the auditor auditor in Fiji plays in the budget process and how oversight is how they provide oversight. The survey also collects additional information on independent fiscal institutions and the legislature and supreme audit institution in Fiji together for this particular survey in 2021 provide weak oversight during the budget process with an oversight score of 28 out of 100. So for us Fiji's parliament provides weak oversight during the planning stage of the budget cycle and weak oversight during the implementation stage and at this juncture I would like to remind our participants that this survey was based on the 2020 to 2021 financial year and not the recent recently announced budget. So for budget oversight some of the findings that I've just mentioned is that Fiji's score to need out of 100. One of the recommendations a few recommendations that we have from this survey regarding budget oversight is to improve the legislatures to improve is that the legislation legislatures sorry should debate budget policy before the executive budget proposal is tabled and approve recommendations for the upcoming budget. The executive we also recommend that the executive budget proposal should be submitted to legislatures at least two months before the start of the budget year and the legislative committees should examine this executive budget proposal and publish reports with their analysis online. In that sense we are emphasizing that before the government presents its executive budget proposal in parliament this should at least be done two months given two months before the start of the budget year so for us the new budget year begins in for us in Fiji new budget year begins in August so if we can at least have the budget proposal or announcement in parliament at least two months before that and to strengthen independence and improve audit oversight by the Fiji office or the auditor general require we also require legislative or judicial approval to appoint and remove the head of the supreme audit institution so this this also adds to the independence of that institution um so that's to do with budget oversight uh moving on to public participation the third key element in in this survey uh this survey assists us the formal opportunities that is offered to the public for their participation through the different stages of the budget process um so we through the public participation arm of this survey we look at the practices of the central government the executive the legislature and the supreme audit institution by using 18 equilirated indicators aligned with the global initiative for fiscal transparencies principles of public participation in fiscal policies mouthful but we can provide further information on that uh if um if you're interested so for for Fiji we scored um 17 out of 100 in public participation so basically in the arm of public participation for this survey we're looking how well these institutions the government the office of the auditor general how they're able to provide the public opportunities to actually assess the budget processes and also provide their their view or their perceptions and their experiences uh so for Fiji in that financial year in the year 2020 to 2021 Fiji scored 17 out of 100 which is not really uh not really good for small country let me just and you'll see for Fiji some of the examples that uh the government offered public participation was through the consultations that were done um virtually and um and done in person where possible remembering uh that the year 2020 to 2021 was during uh COVID during the pandemic phases in um around the around the world so with uh with that experience in mind most of the consultations were also carried out virtually by the then ministry of economy so some of the recommendations that came out of um this survey regarding public participation was for the ministry of economy to pilot mechanisms in monitoring budget implementation as well as sustaining direct engagement with vulnerable and underrepresented communities during pre-budget deliberations Fiji's parliament established public hearings has established public hearings related to approval of the annual budget but we recommend that it should also prioritize a certain actions such as allowing any member of the public or civil society organizations to testify during its hearings on the budget on the budget proposal prior to its approval so in this in this manner when when members of the public or civil society organizations are given the opportunity to be heard on the proposed budget we are also able to give our insight um on how this particular proposed budget may fair with our daily experiences in communities and from our observations as civil society organization another recommendation to the Fiji parliament is to allow members of the public or civil society organizations to testify during its hearings on the audit report so in that way we are also able to give our testament on how an enacted budget and its execution has actually fared within communities with members of the public whether it has worked out what has worked well um suggestions that we may have for um for with regards to the audit report we also Fiji's office of the auditor general has has established mechanisms for the public to assist in the developing of its audit program we recommend that it should prioritize actions to improve public participation in the budget process by establishing formal mechanisms for the public to contribute to relevant audit investigations um so um I've covered all three key elements of um the open budget survey I'm happy to answer any questions I know um some of the terms may have may have been too technical for our viewers but I'm happy to discuss and I believe SWAD will have more to add on and maybe simplify the terms even better than I than I have stated through my presentation um yeah so I look forward to a Q&A session thank you thank you very much uh Liza sorry Lucia my apologies um that was an amazing presentation but also for the work that you've done and continue to do now for those of you who would like access to the survey um Miss Hassan was kind enough to post a link to the summary in the chat window I'd like also like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that if you have questions you may post these questions in the chat feature which will be addressed later in the webinar and now last but certainly at least a final speaker for today Miss SWAD Hassan from open budget survey Miss Hassan joined the international budget partnership in May of 2016 and is based in Washington DC as a program associated with the open budget initiative SWAD is responsible for data collection and review of the open budget survey and coordinating and providing technical assistance to civil society partners and governments throughout the survey process she also assists with other research projects related to budgets and budget transparency prior to joining IBF Miss Hassan worked as a journalist with a news organization in New Delhi assisting with coverage of political stories she holds a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's in international relations from America University's School of International Service Miss Hassan thank you so much for joining us today from the United States over to you thank you Amelia uh thanks for the warm welcome and thank you Lucia for the very comprehensive presentation I'm so impressed um I would also like to thank International Idea for giving IVP an opportunity to present our work here what I'm going to do today is I will clear my screen and share what IVP International Budget Partnership does which will give you an idea of some of the ways in which civil society can monitor budgets in addition to what Lucia already highlighted through the open budget survey so just give me a second here here we are so the International Budget Partnership is an NGO um we work with partners globally all around the world we work with budget analysts community organizers as well as advocates who can advocate for a budgeting system that works for the people and not just for special interests just a democratic style budgeting system um and uh I want to note here that IVP being an international NGO works somewhere in the middle tier where we don't work uh at the community level directly but we work with partners such as CCF in Fiji and through this work we are able to build the capacity of our partners and further allow them to do their work adapted to what they feel is relevant in their countries as opposed to us coming in with some prescriptive notion of what is supposed to be done in their countries what we consider good to be to be good for their countries some of the ways that IVP works is by strengthening civil society organizations around the world we conduct numerous capacity building trainings on how to analyze the budget and how to conduct effective advocacy through building communication plans etc also how to find opportunities um to advocate be it legislature be it um the supreme audit institution CCF has been a part of these trainings in the past um as well we not only work with civil society organizations we also collaborate with them and other accountability actors we have programs related to tax and budget credibility where partners go into their budget uh budgets and analyze really look into the data um as well as go on the ground to check the realities on the ground they have meetings and advocacy meetings as well as um meetings about data collection with the local government officers to then match whether what was written in the budget versus what actually happened in the ground is there or not a huge part of IVP again being an international organization is to produce research materials um including what Lucia talked about the open budget survey is in a large way a research product where we assess the budget transparency globally and I can come to that later um and lastly we engage international and country stakeholders to promote improved budget systems practices policies and outcomes so a huge part again in addition to capacity building is peer exchange IVP holds a lot of global meetings global platforms we are we take special pride in saying that in our meetings we offer a platform for civil society and governments from the same country to join together and work together and understanding how to improve the budget systems in their countries so it's a very collaborative approach but also we hold several meetings where countries can come together to exchange best practices this could be regional this could be global the in the recent years have held quite a lot of uh virtual meetings post-covid on the audit institution and I'm very proud to say that um the UNDP's representative from um East Asia uh sorry the Pacific Asia countries joined us and really was able to talk about the auditing system in Fiji um and so yeah we've offered a platform to interested supreme audit institutions also to share best practices on how they have engaged civil society organizations and just citizens in general in their audit work um about the open budget survey I think Lucia has provided a lot of information I can give you some high level information this is a global assessment it's as Lucia said the only comparative and independent assessment of fiscal transparency oversight in the budget process and public participation now what one of the goals of this survey is to assess transparency and we all know that once you're able to quantify a problem you're able to solve a problem so through these regular uh once in two years kind of assessments you're really able to see the progress that a country is making over the years and we also if interested always assist our civil society partners as well as the governments to understand how they can improve budget transparency the idea is that through this global platform when you recognize the the gaps you can improve transparency based on global norms and international standards that's what the open budget survey is based on it's based on standards set by IMF and OECD and once there is transparency in the country it's the citizens who can take it on to hold their governments accountable that's the idea with the open budget survey we've noticed through our work over so many years that comparison really ends up working well countries often are not trying to necessarily hide information but often just don't know what information citizens would expect the survey has been written from the point of view of citizens so the information that citizens find important so we look for expenditures and revenue sources and whether there is gender budgeting and whether there is disclosure on where the donor funds are coming from how much debt does the country hold all of this is information that then civil society organizations take over to understand what the health spending is in their country also gives them an opportunity to compare it with other countries it depends on whichever issue is important in the country for example i'll give you an example of kirgis republic which is a central asian country former soviet country and it's not a very high income country but for some reason health care in the country was really really poor through budget transparency through analyzing their budgets as well as budgets of neighboring countries they realized that the per capita income within their country the per capita expenditure on health was much lower than the standards that are advised by world health organization as well as much lower than their neighboring countries and the outcomes were evident in the population so a coalition was formed that advocated for better health policies but this coalition was based on or was you know a collective of groups that work on good governance as well as health practitioners themselves so it was a really good way to connect the grassroots with the national level policies in kirgis and they used the parliamentary budget hearings to come together to use a common voice and advocate for stronger policies and i'm happy to share here that they were successful in getting funding for some of the core diseases that were not covered with by the health care system like cancer and hiv aids medicines and now the coalition is also helping monitor the implementation of that budget that was increased for them moving on so the obs is you know the accountability system is a combination of transparency oversight for that transparency which is offered not just through parliament and through the supreme audit institution but also through media and through civil society and then public participation to complement this transparency together we believe this forms a really good budget accountability ecosystem in as lucia mentioned the last round covered 2020-2021 we are currently researching along with our prolific partner ccf for fiji for the 2023 round and the results would be released sometime in may of next year within the malin asia region we have fiji indonesia and png if time permits later on i can show you the country summary for indonesia within this region indonesia is really a star performer they have put in a lot of effort to improve transparency and they have very good quality information in their budget documents where they fall short is on public participation but from what i understand from indonesia they're trying to increase internet penetration because they have so many islands that it's really hard for them to have a cohesive mechanism for participation and then yeah in the past we have collaborated with country and regional organizations as well so starting a few years back our team the open budget survey more in detail more specifically went into capacity development for civil society organizations so what we did was instead of providing general trainings on the open budget survey we actually created courses that were more relevant to their countries and offered it to some of the organizations that work on health or education or infrastructure however everything that they look at is from the point of view of human rights and we were just hearing that there is a gap in trying to understand policy through the budgets because we know that budgets are very much the main policy document of a country where the government has promised you know primary education to all students but only dedicated a very minimal part of the budget to it then there is there is a lag in what was said versus what what is being what is going to be fulfilled this holds true especially for policies related to the environment where there is a lot of talk about putting in funding for climate change however the money almost always ends up being diverted elsewhere and then you know we don't see the results so in the tailored capacity development we offered strategic accompaniment we offered mentorship we offered one-on-one sort of hand-holding if you may call we called it PFM buddies issue-based peer learning so we just connected groups with each other from around the world happy to do that to any of the organizations attending today's event as well and exchanges with the IVP country offices advocacy is another huge part we do recognize that sometimes in addition to the local partners a lot of the acknowledgement comes from an international organization that is peer reviewed as well as recognized by a lot of international donors as well so we recognize that so the open budget survey is used by the European Union their aid arm as well as the World Bank and open government partnership in assessing who they would be giving aid to so some of the criteria includes democratic indicators as well as fiscal transparency so we as to the extent possible and if invited do attend and advocate alongside our partners we never try to overtake them ever but we advocate alongside the country strategies we develop country strategies focusing on particular issues that are off relevance to the country again in partnership with the partners on the ground and IVP and our partners engage in a broad range of advocacy activities this depends on wherever there is an opening in some countries legislatures are generally more open than perhaps supreme audit institutions or in some countries the executive is very motivated so we see where there are openings and we work with our partners there another stream of work that may be of interest in terms of what civil society can do and this is related to sustainable development goals is the is budget credibility what is budget credibility is it is that if say hundred dollars was promised for climate change say through just planting more trees but at the end of the year only 50 was spent why did that happen so and in some cases there's also overspending so just an example of budget credibility from around the region so for example in Sri Lanka the agricultural sector employs 26 percent of the country's labor force but suffers from declining productivity I mean 26 percent of the country's labor force is huge so it's a quarter regardless the government budget for agriculture and irrigation was underspent from 10 to 40 percent annually throughout the years except during the election year which I'm sure it doesn't surprise anyone because during that year they had to prove results so the budget credibility project is very much a research project again here too we work with our partners sometimes once there is a credibility issue that is identified just by analyzing the budget you go on to the ground interview people see what is happening on the ground to understand what really is the credibility problem and the idea is of course to improve service delivery which is by far the most important aspect for most citizens another example from the region and this is the this is where ibp I would say in some ways is is growing we also see this as an interest from donors unfortunately is country-level presence so we are now in close to six countries most of them happen to be in Africa and with the exception of Indonesia so we have an ibp country office in Indonesia this office works again with partners to on issues that are of relevance relevance to them one of it is I think they create community scorecards to understand the family plans that are meant for families below a certain income and how do families or the recipients rate the services that were meant for them so it's kind of a social audit you can think of it where the on the ground we are checking against the reality of whether what was promised was delivered or not in addition one of the things that ibp Indonesia's office worked on is tracking government's fuel subsidy so what they noticed was that the fishering community was really miserable but they had a lot of budget that was allocated for them however what was promised to the fishery sector was never delivered to them so with ibp and csos when they went into the budget documents and really analyzed through the execution reports which is the as lucía mentioned the in-year reports the media review the year-end report when they looked at these reports they found out again that what was promised was never delivered and sometimes these changes happen without the approval of parliament they just happen at the back end so you go back sort of certain years to see the implementation of the budget and so by calling the government out on this and working together as a coalition again the fisheries community was able to get what was promised to them and as you can see by these figures here they realized that 74 percent of it gets diverted to other other sectors often sectors that have stronger lobbies yeah and I will stop here happy to take any questions and if you are interested in reading about these research products or our work internationalbudget.org is our website thank you so much Amelia over to you thank you very much for that incredible presentation we'll now take questions if anyone has a question please feel free to use the raise hand feature that's allocated that's at the bottom of your screen have a like I said before if you don't have access to a mic or if your mic is not working please feel free to put your question in the chat feature but there was a question I thought that I'd ask to kind of beat everything started I know how sometimes it takes people a while to get their thoughts in order and pose their questions this is regarding Mr. Wangilir's presentation that was done earlier but I guess it's a question that I could pose to the both of you I see that you both have incredible experience and I think Mr. Wangilir said earlier that Fiji scored 37 out of 100 in our transparency ranking if I'm not mistaken in both your opinions you know what could Fiji have done better and how does this kind of lack of transparency affect the everyday citizen Mr. Wangilir would you like to go first and then I can get Mr. Wangilir to answer after thank you Amilia in terms of transparency for us from from the survey one of the key recommendations we made was for the timely production and availability of some of the eight key budget documents just a few of them actually the the pre-budget statement the in-year reports as well as a publication of a citizen's budget media review and year and reports so the availability of these documents online actually gives the public members of the public access to information as to how the state is using public funds or how the enacted budget is being implemented or actioned by the various institutions or ministerial agencies so in that sense when these documents are made available online we as members of the public are able to assess for ourselves how the public funds are being utilized whether the actions that the government had said that they would take through the enacted budget is actually being implemented and what more work needs to be done so in so all in all you know everything is out there all the information is out there the public is able to access it I do understand that these mostly materials that are available online so if this can be channeled to other accessible means as well by by our government then all the better for members of the public so for our for CCF those are key recommendations we are making to improve on transparency I hope I hope that provides some some that that's an answer to your question Amelia taking the flag level Mr Sarn if you'd like to share your thoughts yeah thank you I can't speak to the sorry about that I can't speak to the context political context in in Fiji but just as a person who reviews the open budget survey I see that Fiji does not make a execution information available to its citizens so there is information on what is planned for next year but there is no information on how the budget is being spent generally we've seen in the open budget survey that you know there is more planning information so you know governments generally like to make big promises and highlight those big promises but when it comes to the execution that's where they lack and the open budget survey as Lucia had mentioned measures the execution in four four documents which is the monthly reports the media review the annual report the year and report the financial accounts that are supposed to give you sort of a good reflection on what happened in the year why were some of the programs not implemented as they were promised what happened to the aid that was coming the revenues that were promised all of that including a narrative explanation and I think that's really missing in Fiji but one of the interesting things I found about Fiji compared to the rest of the countries is that they have a really active pre-budget consultation system and it almost feels like well if you have pre-budget consultations how our citizens would be more empowered to follow up if they had access to some of this information that is kind of withheld for a long time um yeah so I would I would leave it there um yeah thank you thank you so much miss Hassan okay so um I have two comments that were shared in the chat window the first one was from Mr Ulai and Tui Koro and he just asked if you could please make mention of the country that you were referring to when you were making reference if you could please make reference to the country that you're referring to when you're making your comparison with fisheries and the second question miss Hassan was and this was asked by the chat window as well from an anonymous attendee what is IBF's plan and holding the same kind of surveys in South Pacific countries like Vanuatu, Samoa etc that are not in the recent surveys yeah both very good questions um I'm going to link to uh the fisheries example is from Indonesia and I'm going to link to it uh just give me one second so here it's a really good example it follows it's very easy to read if you want to read it because it follows uh it almost has a story first it follows one lady who whose life was in a way transformed through this program and is now able to make use of the the fuel subsidies which earlier she was not even able to sometimes go out into the water for fishing um regarding including other countries yeah unfortunately that is something that a request that we get often but uh it's something that we try to how should I say it um be representative of the region um so you know there are it's not possible to include all the countries of the world um so we try to include a few countries from every region around the world uh but your I take your request well and I can I can bring it to the team and see if we uh can do something what the way around it would be is that we have conducted pilots sometimes in some countries that have shown interest um which gives you an idea of how transparent the country is compared to other countries over to you Amelia thank you very much you Sasan now I have a question for Miss Lanilewu um and um that is I I noticed that in a document that you shared earlier that the citizens budget was not produced um when you did share that budget sorry when you did share that document during your presentation uh why do you think that is and what are some of the obstacles that you feel are present that would prevent the government from publishing a document like this and I guess Miss Sasan you could you could probably lend your experience to that as well one of some instances that you've seen where in cases where the budget sorry where the government hasn't published a citizens budget what are some of the obstacles that they faced and maybe countries similar to ours that might have that might draw parallels to Fiji thank you Amelia um yes the the citizens budget has never produced since the last survey for Fiji you might have all seen in the the information that I had shared earlier that Fiji had not produced the citizens budget I cannot speak on behalf of the previous government that did not publish a citizens budget uh but from responses that we um have indirectly received or uh monitored and assessed as to why this has not been published uh would have been to do with a lack of resources um again as Miss Sasan has uh rightly said more uh investment and attention being placed on the executive's budget proposal that phase of the budget process there being more focus and attention put into that as compared to um documents being made document or information being made available and accessible to members of the public such as the citizens budget um I can't really say for sure why the government uh why the previous government failed to produce this it would have been a really helpful guideline a guide to the members of the public as to what the enacted budget entailed um what they would look forward to in terms of public services uh where improvements were being made why money was being placed why more public funding was being placed in a particular ministry or particular service um that would have been great uh and um and and that is something we are actually looking forward to uh this year um if in case um some of you may not know Fiji has finally produced a citizens budget uh this year and this was released I believe last month by the or earlier sorry earlier this month by the ministry of finance so even though that has been produced we are also going to monitor how well the public receives or responds to this particular guideline it is a first step Fiji finally we have a citizens budget um but there are many other ways that the ministry of finance can improve this in terms of accessibility but you know um it is great that uh that we finally come to producing a citizens budget but in we also we also need to understand the political context uh that Fiji was in in the previous in the past 16 years um to maybe understand better as to why the citizens budget was not produced but again that is a question that would be better answered by those who were in leadership in the past 16 years thank you thank you Lucia to add to what Lucia was saying and uh again this is not specific to Fiji but often what we have found uh very open to a million or miss us miss Hassan if you'd like to uh very briefly just uh compliment what you're saying what we have found is that um countries lack resources not just financial but often human resources as well so it's about just assigning a team to often it is the communications team to create a template for citizens budget that could be then repeated year after year once you have a template it becomes easier to follow the same and plug in different numbers but that starting point can be hard so I'm hopeful that um Fiji would continue producing the citizens budget it is really such a popular document in many countries um especially uh because budgets can be so technical this is sort of a window to understanding what the government is promising yeah over to you thank you so much sorry Amelia if I could just add on I'm sorry I just wanted something quickly um so for Fiji the the good thing is that now it is mandatory for for the Ministry of Finance to actually publish a citizens budget the reason why I say that it's mandatory because it is now in law within the financial management of 2021 so it's actually something um good I would say that came out of the last the the last government that put this into place um that quote a user-friendly summary of the annual budget within one month after the date the annual budget is approved by parliament so with that particular provision in law now um within a month uh that the budget is approved by parliament Fiji would need to expect Fiji would expect a citizens budget to be made accessible to members of the public so that that is something great um and it's something that the Ministry of Finance now uh will need to uphold and continue to improve as we move on and it's also an area that civil society organizations can help up with especially uh in getting our communities our members the members of the public to have access uh to this important information yeah thank you thank you so much miss Langelevo um sorry to the person who to the anonymous attendee who had asked about um uh who had asked about the example uh that miss Hasan had used earlier she's actually posted a link in the chat group if you'd like to take a look at that a little later on um so if you'd like to read more about it um I have to admit that um I really loved the answers to your questions and I did have a follow-up question but in the interests of time I'll ask the two questions that were asked in the chat feature by Mr. Ulaikli Cuarro and uh his question was for you miss Hasan and that was do you partner for advocacy workshops and if so how can we reach out yes thank you so much for that question and I really genuinely wish the answer was yes um unfortunately the um the workshops and um are open to our partners that IDP has engaged with for for some time um so I recommend you reach out to the partners that are that we work with on the ground um and perhaps we can share materials with them related to how we've conducted the advocacy workshop it's yeah I wish we could open ourselves to everybody but unfortunately it's a big world sorry about that I understand I thank you very much Mr. Hasan and miss Lucky Liwi the second question was for you um does CCF engage in budget budget advocacy or capacity building workshops on budget guidelines um yes we do uh in um in the past we have we have implemented budget advocacy workshops we have um also made dissemination plans in terms of the open budget survey and recommendations from there to be made available with our CSOs as well as members of the public even to the extent of communities we have worked with F-Course as well in extending the um in capacity building in terms of budget advocacy and processes so um yes we do carry out budget advocacy work um and you know we also uh as I have said we bring this down to the grassroots level uh and part of these budget advocacy workshops is helping members of the public draw up their uh budget submissions uh whether it be their own submissions or um through CCF um and if it is through CCF we echo their submissions um to the ministry of finance and in the past ministry of economy um whether it be in public consultations or the consultation specifically for civil society so yeah thank you so much miss Lucky Liwi um if we do not have any more questions from our attendees I'm going to give the both of you a few seconds to gather your thoughts so you can deliver your closing remarks but thank you so much to both of you for your wonderful insights today now while they gather their thoughts for the closing remarks I'd like to extend our appreciation to all of you for being here this morning to participate in today's webinar the greatest tools we have in our position are always education and information together hand in hand they can allow us to make smart and form choices but also allows to hold our leaders accountable for the decisions that they make or in some cases don't make now with those few words miss Hasan would you like to give your closing remarks now thank you Amelia and thank you international idea for this opportunity as you said education and information is our weapon um I recommend and encourage each and every one of us to not be scared by how technical budgets are they really have the power to uh transform accountability uh in each country so um yeah more power to budgets and more power to civil society thank you absolutely absolutely thank you so much for your time today and thank you so much for the work that you do um miss Lucky level I have to give you a closing remarks now thank you Amelia special thank you again to international idea for this wonderful opportunity to um further advocate advocate on the findings and recommendations of open budget survey special thank you as well to um international budget partnerships especially to you SWAT for always bearing with us and helping us through this these surveys um and we look forward to completing the current survey that we're working on together and we look forward to releasing that to the people of Fiji and advocating for more change to come about um in the country um as for civil society organizations while this survey is being carried out by IBP with uh CCF this survey is really the work of all the civil society organizations the recommendations are for all of us for the benefit of the people of Fiji um and we've seen in uh even though changes may not come about overnight in these changes may slowly come about and we've seen that with uh the recent production of a citizen's uh budget and for for our CSOs that is a testament to um to persistent and strategic uh advocacy as well as solidarity amongst our CSOs to work together uh to see that change does really come about not only through policy but through actions by the government uh so I would like to encourage all of us um on this uh on this webinar to continue to work together um and if there's a need from any organization to for CCF to maybe give a skillshare or information session on on the OBS in the findings from Fiji for the last the surveys please feel free to reach up to us we can also provide for the information sheets such as the one that's the miss Hassan has shared um that can be shared to your communities to your target groups as well um thank you thank you very much miss Langele for your time today and for all of the work that you and CCF do um we'd like to thank the both of you for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here with us this morning now I know I already thanked our panelists but I wanted to again on behalf of International Idea Fiji and International Idea Asia and our Pacific Regional Office we want to thank our speakers and especially you our audience for joining this live event miss Hassan and miss Langeleville thank you for your time but more importantly for the work that you both do it is important it matters and we see you thank you for our attendees if you enjoyed this webinar then we'd like to strongly encourage you to look at for the dates of our next webinar and we look forward to your participation until then from the International Idea Team and I'll see you at the next level and miss Samo Duman