[{"bbox": [97, 153, 573, 181], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Transparency and accountability of public spending"}, {"bbox": [96, 205, 1134, 499], "category": "Text", "text": "**Guatemala has the potential to enhance fiscal transparency, facilitate improved economic and fiscal decision-making and foster government accountability among citizens and markets.** While the country is relatively advanced in fiscal reporting within the region, with the regular publication of various monthly fiscal reports enabling timely monitoring of diverse variables, there are still areas for improvement. Data inconsistencies across different reports and incomplete coverage remain prevalent issues. A 2023 International Monetary Fund (IMF) assessment identified gaps such as the absence of reporting on accrued interests, limited budget execution information from institutions outside the central government, and insufficient details in tax expenditure reports. Moreover, the assessment highlighted the need for enhanced transparency in fiscal forecasting, emphasizing the importance of clarifying projections and ensuring consistency with forecasts from the Bank of Guatemala. Additionally, it recommended expanding fiscal risk analysis to include risks from the financial sector, public-private partnerships (PPPs), contingent assets, and natural resource exploration activities."}, {"bbox": [96, 522, 1134, 897], "category": "Text", "text": "**Congress should play a pivotal role in overseeing fiscal and monetary policy and enhancing overall fiscal accountability, yet the existing practices, lack of procedures and low technical capacity significantly limit its effectiveness.** The Congress' finance and budget commission (CFPM) holds responsibility for fiscal and monetary policy, including legislative reforms and external audit report reviews. However, its composition varies annually based on Plenary representation, potentially affecting member suitability. While expertise is recommended, it is not mandatory, potentially impacting legislative analysis quality. Additionally, guidance may come from permanent or temporary advisors, whose hiring process is at the discretion of block leaders or commission presidents, possibly disrupting legislative advice consistency. As a result, the CFPM has shown deficiencies in technical capacity, hindering comprehensive development, transparency and anticorruption efforts. The 2018 Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) report highlights legislative oversight shortcomings regarding external audit reports, with insufficient follow-up on findings. The CFPM's review of the 2024 budget revealed technical and legal inconsistencies, requiring rectification by the Congress Plenary. To address these issues, it is critical to establish a budget technical office to advise the CFPM on budget-related matters, revenue mobilization, public debt, and public investment project evaluation."}, {"bbox": [96, 921, 1134, 1214], "category": "Text", "text": "**The Auditor General's Office serves as Guatemala's primary government oversight and control entity, responsible for supervising public fund management and ensuring officials' integrity.** Comprising two branches—the Probability Sub-auditor's Office and the Quality of Public Expenditure Sub-auditor's Office—the Auditor General's Office conducts audits to assess financial management and transparency in resource utilization. However, reports such as the 2018 PEFA identify persistent weaknesses in external audits, characterized by material but non-systemic findings. In fiscal year 2022, the Public Expenditure Quality Sub-auditor conducted 713 audits, encompassing 46 performance and 667 financial and compliance audits. Despite yielding 3,169 findings pinpointing areas for enhancement, the fragmented audit processes did not result in clear and actionable recommendations and follow-up actions. Furthermore, auditing procedures are still performed through cumbersome bureaucratic practices that have not adopted yet the use of risk-based economic and financial analysis methodologies supported by data analytics or artificial intelligence tools."}, {"bbox": [96, 1239, 1134, 1373], "category": "Text", "text": "**A comprehensive reform strategy is essential to tackle the challenges in Public Financial Management (PFM) and to boost the effectiveness, transparency, and accountability of public expenditure.** The proposed initiative, consisting of activities aimed at modernizing PFM governance and processes, enhancing the quality of public spending, and fortifying accountability mechanisms, seeks to address the underlying issues and establish groundwork for more sustainable and impactful public service delivery."}, {"bbox": [96, 1426, 1071, 1504], "category": "Text", "text": "Identification of main stakeholders (duty bearers and right holders) and corresponding institutional and/or organisational issues (mandates, potential roles, and capacities) to be covered by the action:\nGovernment institutions are direct beneficiaries of the action."}, {"bbox": [96, 1532, 1134, 1639], "category": "Text", "text": "For Specific Objective 1 (SO1), SO2 and SO3, GAE (Presidential Commission on Open and Electronic Government) will lead and coordinate the project implementation as main stakeholder and leader of the Technical Working Group that will oversee the implementation of the Digital Agenda in Guatemala. The technical working group is formed by SEGEPLAN (General Secretary for Planning), MINFIN, MINEX, MINGOB and SENACYT"}, {"bbox": [1015, 1679, 1144, 1706], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 11 of 38"}]