MANILA, Philippines – A group of international donor agencies lauded the Philippines for its supposed improvements in budget preparation and transparency.

According to the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessment report, the country scored “satisfactory” in 19 out of 31 indicators – a far cry from garnering good performance in only 8 indicators in 2010.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, in a statement Sunday, June 19, said the results acknowledged the reforms of the Aquino administration, especially in strengthening central agencies such as the Department of Budget and Management.

“We performed very well in Transparency of Public Finances. This pertains to our budget preparation and budget management processes, which the PEFA rated highly in public policy and transparency,” he said.

“We also rated well in Policy-based Fiscal Strategy and Budgeting. We displayed satisfactory or good performance in all areas under this pillar, which reflects the many efforts such as performance – informed budgeting, zero-based budgeting, and the budget priorities framework, we made in the recent years to improve the budget formulation process.”

While there were improvement, PEFA noted that the country needs to improve in terms of budget information reliability, legislative oversight, internal controls, and accounting and financial reporting.

“We need to improve further on these indicators in order to increase the ability of the budget to track and promote fiscal discipline, proper agency planning and proper internal controls in the agencies,” he said.

PEFA is a partnership between 7 donor agencies and international financial institutions to assess the condition of a country’s public expenditure, procurement, and financial accountability systems.

These agencies include the European Commission, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Monetary Fund, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, UK’s Department for International Development, and the World Bank. – Rappler.com