“The interest we attracted from both the authorities and participants to this launch shows defence issues are a topic of big interest in Chile. I do believe there are real opportunities of working together” said Juan Carlos Délano, President of Chile Transparente (TI's chapter in the country), looking back to the launch of our latest report ‘The Transparency of Defence Budgets’ on 5 October in Santiago, Chile. “There has been a change of attitude and there’s no secrets in the armed forces” he emphasised.

The report ranked 93 countries according to their defence budget transparency, and it shows nearly 65% of countries studied score moderate or below. It also found that most of the 93 countries studied disclose too little defence and security spending information to their public. The report also shows that many countries severely restrict the information available even to their legislatures.

Chile performed well, ranking moderate to high, and received the highest score in South America. The report indicates that the country’s systems are generally robust, and the national defence establishments are accountable to the public. Chile publishes all its budget documents, and only 1 per cent or less of their budget expenditure is dedicated to secret items.

“It’s good timing to find out about these results now,” explained Juan Emilio Cheyre, ex Commander in Chief of the Chilean Military and now an international relations academic. In an opinion piece in El Mercurio, Chile’s main broadsheet, he concludes: “Chile has given high importance to these matters. The Armed Forces have been working for years under the premise that transparency is the main antidote to corruption. The armed forces have developed a process of opening themselves to society, generating an internal cultural shift where accountability, good governance and transparency have settled in the minds of both high and low rank officials”.

The launch was followed by a roundtable in which academics, members of the Chilean Parliament, ex MODs and current MODs shared thoughts on the findings of the report.

The Chilean Minister of Defence Andres Allamand, who was also proud when addressing the audience in the launch, stressed the challenges ahead. “This level of transparency, which is already quite high, will be increased when the Copper Law is replaced”.

Although our report did not cover the existence of off-budget expenditure, this is an area in which Chile has improved in recent years, as new legislation proposed by former President Michelle Bachelet and current President Sebastian Piñera has sought to increase the accountability of funds from copper mining, which were formerly funneled directly into the military due to a law which destined a 10% of Chilean copper earnings to military expenditure.

“If you know how much your competitor or another country is spending in arms and there is transparency in the handling of that, you generate trust” explained Alan Waldron, our senior advisor who launched the report in Santiago.

Accessibility to defence budget documents are important, as they are a key tool that the public and civil society can use to hold their governments to account.

Download 'The Transparency of Defence Budgets.'

Download the presentation of the report in English and/or Spanish.

Look at photos of the launch.

Read the blog 'Why care about defence budget transparency?'

Read press release 'Chile's defence budget transparency is an example for South America.'

Read press release 'UK scores high for defence budget transparency, but room for reform remains.'

Look at the media coverage of the launch.

Read other blogs we've wrote.

Learn more on Our Work and Focus Areas.