The Open Budget Survey report that is expected to be released in May, should reveal whether Papua New Guinea (PNG) has improved in information transparency on budgets, their audits and other information relevant to it, to ensure accountability on the part of the government. According to the PNG Institute of National Affairs (PNG INA) Director Mr. Paul Barker, the Open Budget Survey is part of a global survey conducted every two years and looks at the openness of the budget process in terms of how much information governments release on the budget and how budget expenditures have occurred in the past and the audit of the budgets. He said the survey asks whether information on new budget documents, the end of year reports, the mid-year reports and the auditor general’s reports, are released in a timely and comprehensive manner. “So, every two years this is conducted, and PNG is usually somewhere in the middle of countries, but when it comes to reporting and public participation, it comes out very poorly.” “The auditing is many years out of date, and it makes it very difficult to hold the government accountable for the use of public money within government departments, statutory authorities and state-owned enterprises, and right through to local level governments and district development authorities,” said Mr. Barker. “We’ve done it since 2005 and instead of improving over the several years, PNG has gone a little bit backwards.” He further added that unless the government improves on making the information on the budgets accessible, it will be difficult for the public to hold the government accountable. Nevertheless, Barker said the regional report, the country report and the global report on the survey should be released next month and it should be interesting to see where PNG now stands in comparison to the other countries in the Open Budget Survey that was conducted.