Development finance assessment

DIMENSION 5: 
TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
DIMENSION 5:
TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Mutual accountability and transparency support effective partnerships, strong monitoring 
and enable greater effectiveness in the impact of financing. For the GoU, it encompasses 
fiscal transparency and increased openness to scrutiny from actors including parliament, 
civil society, the media and others. Private actors and development partners also have a 
responsibility to publish information on their activities. This dimension of the DFA looks at 
opportunities to enhance information sharing by government and other development actors 
and to strengthen mechanisms for the scrutiny and accountability of their development 
finance.
POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION AND GOVERNANCE
The scores for the World Bank’s Quality of Governance (QoG) indicators throughout the 
previous period of autocratic regime (pre-2016) are very low. They have been slowly improving 
since 2010, albeit starting from a very low base (Figure 25). The latest data seem to indicate 
that the wave of reforms undertaken since is slowly speeding up necessary improvements 
across these different governance indicators.
Figure 25 Governance indicators
-2,5
-2,0
-1,5
-1,0
-0,5
0,0
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
Average score
Voice/Accountability
Government effectiveness
Regulatory quality
Rule of Law
Control of corruption
Source: World Bank, World Governance Indicators, 2020. 
Note:
Scores range from approximately -2.5 (weak) to 2.5 (strong) governance performance.
The QoG indicators signal the scale of the sustained efforts required by the GoU towards 
improving the country’s overall governance performance up to the level of modern-day 
democracies. With great promises of political and economic reform
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, the government has 
set a high bar for itself. Maintaining a paternalistic form of governance, which restricts civil 
society freedoms and human rights, stifles bureaucracy and indulges corruption may clash 
with the expectations of a growing young population facing a dire economic future (Chatham 
House, 2019). 
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The 2016 presidential campaign promised strong efforts to tackle corruption and modernize the civil service.

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DEVELOPMENT FINANCE ASSESSMENT FOR THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
Fulfilling these citizens’ expectations will require prioritizing the strengthening of 
independent institutions. Small and innovative steps have been taken to improve the rule 
of law
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, but more can be done, including more transparent judicial processes and ensuring 
regional authorities have less impunity before the law. The new leadership has transformed 
the media environment, but the country still lacks objective analytical reporting (Transparency 
International, 2019).
The Judicial and Legal System Reform Programme introduced the concept of openness in 
the public sector, setting the expectation of how public sector organizations should interact 
with media, citizens’ organization, civil society, and other societal stakeholders. Budgetary 
transparency and control are slowly improving. 
The Law on Parliamentary control has introduced a much needed, stronger role for 
the Parliament, which is now tasked with questioning and examining the budget from the 
moment it is sent to the Parliament, and monitoring the execution of the budget. Historically, 
the parliament was never actively substantively engaged in budget processes. In addition to 
recent amendments to the Budget Code to allow for greater role of the parliament in budget 
appropriations, in 2019 a special Budgetary Department/Office was established within the 
Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis. Among other things, this Budgetary Department 
provides analytical and information support to the members of the Legislative Chamber 
during deliberation of the state budget, approval and further control and monitoring of its 
implementation and execution. However, the parliament’s de facto capacity to effectively 
influence budgetary decision is minimal. Development partners provide capacity building to 
strengthen the role of the Parliament and civil society in the budgetary process, including 
supporting the preparation of the annual Citizen Budget.
TRANSPARENCY 
The degree of fiscal transparency can help provide a sense of a country’s fiscal credibility 
and plays a role in how financial markets view its fiscal track record. Fiscal transparency 
contributes to macroeconomic stability, reduces corruption, provides control over budget 
expenditures, ensures accountability of government, and increases the attractiveness of the 
country to investors.
Public disclosure of information is becoming a critical feature of PFM systems in the 
country. Over the years several initiatives have demonstrated the government’s willingness 
to facilitate scrutiny of government policies and programs by citizens:
„
Transparency is a cross-cutting principle of the Budget Code of Uzbekistan, adopted in 
2013. The MoF is committed to align budget preparation and execution procedures with 
the Code of Good Practices on Fiscal Transparency of the IMF and the GoU adopted a 
“Law on Government Openness”. 
„
In 2015, the Government launched an open data internet portal, which is meant to serve 
as a “single access point” to the open data Different Government agencies have already 
taken first steps towards implementing the Fiscal Transparency Code and the Law on 
Openness, some with support from UNDP. 
„
An important improvement towards enhancing transparency of public spending was the 
publication of the first, annual Citizen’s Budget
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in 2018. These provide civil society with 
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The Judicial and Legal System Reform Programme introduced the concept of openness in the public sector, setting 
the expectation of how public sector organizations should interact with media, citizens’ organization, civil society, and 
other societal stakeholders.
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The Citizens Budget is a simplified version of a budget document that uses the informal language, friendly formats 
to facilitate better understanding of the key budget elements to general audience.

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