local NGOs). Consequently, this paper focuses on the Kyrgyz Republic’s rural population using the rural sample of the Life in Kyrgyzstan survey data.<sup>1</sup> The following section provides a brief overview of the fiscal transparency and the scope of the local budgets in the Kyrgyz Republic; sections three and four present methods and the data used; section five discusses the results; and section six concludes.

# **2. BUDGET TRANSPARENCY AND LOCAL BUDGET IN KYRGYZSTAN**

The Kyrgyz Republic ranks relatively poorly across governance and budget transparency indicators. The Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) – a research data set by the World Bank summarizing the views on the quality of governance – show little progress or a decline in rankings across its six indicators for the Kyrgyz Republic in the period from 1996 to 2013 (The World Bank, 2014).<sup>2</sup> When viewing the WGI between 2006 and 2013, most measurements of governance deteriorated, especially in “Control of Corruption”, while only the “Voice and Accountability” indicator improved, though from a low base with 30 points out of 100.

The Kyrgyz Republic ranked poorly as well on the Open Budget Index (OBI), which is an internationally accepted index on national budget transparency compiled biennially by the International Budget Partnership (IBP).<sup>3</sup> The Kyrgyz Republic’s score in OBI in 2012 was 20 (out of 100) – the result far below the average score of 43 in all 100 countries surveyed, but comparable with the average score of low-income economies (International Budget Partnership, 2012). To put this in the regional context, the Kazakh Republic ranked the highest with 48 points and Tajikistan the lowest with 17 points. The Kyrgyz Republic has made marginal progress since the inception of the OBI in 2006, with its score increasing from 8 points (out of 100) in 2008 to 20 points in 2012.<sup>4</sup> Placing key budget documents in the public domain can strengthen budget transparency,<sup>5</sup> with emphasis on 1 Compared to rural population, urban residents seem to be more interested, but are considerably less informed and less active in budget processes. Details of a comparison of responses between rural and urban population is provided in Appendix 1.

2 The six dimensions are Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. The WGI data are gathered from a number of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and private sector firms. Information about methodology, data sources, and country rankings can be found at http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home. 3 The IBP is a global research and advocacy program, which seeks to promote public access to budget information and the adoption of accountable budget systems.

4 Kyrgyzstan is likely to improve dramatically the OBI score in the next issue of the OBI index. The recently launched Open Budget Survey Tracker indicates that all but one budget document was made available to the public (http://www.obstracker.org/).

5 OBI notes eight key documents to make available to the public: Pre-Budget statement, Executive’s Budget Proposal, Enacted Budget, Citizens Budget, In-Year Reports, Mid-Year Review, Year-End 3