c) Transparency

Transparency in the public action constitutes, apart from a key competitiveness factor in an economy based on knowledge, an absolutely essential instrument in achieving budgetary stability.
 It is evident, just as it has been proved in countries such as Greece and Portugal, that transparency in budgetary information is the element required so that the discipline mechanisms may safeguard its efficacy and creditworthiness. The supervision and coordination task implied by complying with a stability law may only be exercised if true and accurate information is available about the budgetary evolution, which demands, on the one hand, the correct application of the accounting principles and, on the other hand, compliance with the established information supply calendars.

Besides, transparency is the only means to achieve the efficiency of the public sector since it allows the taxpayers/voters to get to know the costs and benefits of the decisions adopted by the public authorities.
The Government will encourage such transparency in the public accounts by legally providing the measures necessary to endow the public sector with a higher budgetary transparency.

The Government has already adopted certain measures in view of that very much needed budgetary transparency. Thus, for example, the 2005 PGE now include all the adjustments necessary to cut down the operations which, with transcendence in the financing need, do not influence on the budget. Likewise, the so-called Ley de Acompañamiento has been abolished, which implies a transcendental strengthening of the democratic control that the Parliament must exercise over the Government’s legislative initiative.
In the sphere of the economic and statistical information transparency, being of main importance to understand the country’s economic and social reality, the Government has launched an agreement3 within the Delegate Committee for Economic Affairs – Comisión Delegada para Asuntos Económicos – to have the Ministries publish, according to specific calendars, all the economic and statistical information likely to be published except for the information that is duly protected by statistical secret and data protection.
The application of the transparency principle will not only affect the amount of information supplied but, above all, the quality, the time periods and the foreseeable character of its publication as well as the communication media used.

In brief, in the Budgets for 2005 the stability policy in practice up to now is encouraged by reducing the deficit estimated for the State to 0.4% of the GDP as opposed to the 0.8% stated in the Budgets of the previous fiscal year. Also, the Budgets for 2005 have a main characteristic that differentiates them from past fiscal years which is the promotion of measures to boost both productivity and transparency.

3 The Agreement of the Government may be found on the following website: Portal Minhac