Failure to Publish Key Budget Documents Led to Ghana’s Poor OBS Score — SEND Ghana
By Eugene Nyarko Jnr. | British Council, Accra
Programme Officer of SEND Ghana, Mr Mohammed Tajudeen Abdulai, has attributed Ghana’s poor performance in the 2025 Open Budget Survey (OBS) largely to the country’s failure to publish key budget documents on time.
Presenting the findings of the survey during a media engagement at the British Council in Accra on Wednesday, Mr Abdulai explained that the OBS assessed 82 countries worldwide using 145 questions covering transparency, public participation and oversight.
He said Ghana’s transparency score improved marginally from 17 per cent in 2023 to 22 per cent in 2025, but remained significantly below the international benchmark score of 61 per cent.
According to him, Ghana recorded the lowest transparency score among the four West African countries — Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia — that participated in the survey.
Mr Abdulai disclosed that Ghana’s transparency score had declined sharply from 56 per cent in 2021 to 22 per cent in 2025.
He explained that although eight internationally accepted budget documents are used to assess budget transparency, Ghana published only five of them within the survey period.
He identified the Executive Budget Proposal and the Citizens’ Budget as key documents that were not published on time, contributing significantly to the country’s low score.
Mr Abdulai further noted that only two out of the available documents met the required standards regarding comprehensiveness and adequacy of information.
He recommended that government ensure the timely publication of all key budget documents and improve their content by providing detailed information on debt levels, revenue sources and expenditure projections.
On public participation, he said Ghana’s score improved from 22 per cent in 2023 to 33 per cent in 2025 but stressed that more needed to be done, particularly during the implementation stage of the budget process where citizen participation remained non-existent.
He called on the Ministry of Finance to utilise digital platforms to widen public involvement in budget preparation and implementation.
