A transparent and detailed budget that is available to the public is key to holding governments accountable to their citizens. Unfortunately, in many countries the defence budgeting process remains opaque and far removed from civilian oversight.

The report identifies the main aspects of defence budget transparency, including an overview of current practices and the risks that arise at each stage of the budgeting process. It also ranks 93 countries according to their defence budget transparency.

'The Transparency of Defence Budgets' found that most of the 93 countries studied disclose too little defence and security spending information to their public. The study also shows many countries severely restrict the information available even to their legislatures.  The scale of the challenge is clear: nearly 65% of countries studied score moderate transparency or below.

The banding of countries into high, moderate to high, moderate, moderate to low and low defence budget transparency resulted from scoring the defence-related questions part of the Open Budget Initiative Questionnaire, and supplementary research. The answers provided by countries were given different grades depending on:

• whether they publish (or not) their budget proposal, enacted budget and audit reports
• the percentage of secret items in their defence expenditure
• the existence of adequate staff to audit the security sector
• the provision of detailed budget information to their parliaments

Only 13 countries have high transparency according to these standards. Twenty countries scored moderate to high; 14 ranked moderate; 21, moderate to low and 25 have low defence budget transparency.

Apart from the ranking, the report elaborates on a more detailed questionnaire, which is a tool that can be used for a more accurate and thorough assessment of defence budget transparency, by either governments or civil society organisations.