The recent Fiscal Transparency Table released by BudgIt Foundation that ranked Oyo State last in the country does not provide a full picture of the level of fiscal transparency in the state, OYOINSIGHT.COM can exclusively report.
Recall that on Sunday, this newspaper reported that the new ranking by BudgIt implies that the state has the poorest level of fiscal transparency in the country in the fourth quarter of last year.
However, new details made available to OYOINSIGHT.COM has revealed that the state ranked low because, at the time the organization conducted its findings, the website for asessing the state’s fiscal information was undergoing a system upgrade.
Over the past 24 hours, this newspaper has assessed and reviewed a series of documents, including several exchanges between the state and BudgIt, that gives credence to the state’s explanation.
“Recently we had an upgrade on our website. It was around that time they went back to check the availability of those information, that was the period we were doing the website upgrade.
“These things are available. Most of the things they claim are not available now were available and reflected when they ranked us in quarters 1, 2, and 3. It was towards the end of March that the website came up again after they finished the upgrade,” the Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Prof. Musibau Babatunde explained in an interview with OYOINSIGHT.COM on Sunday night.
“My grouse with them is that they had access to these documents in quarter 3. Like MTEF now, it’s a yearly thing. Once it’s there in a particular year, definitely, any scoring you’re doing that year should reflect it.
“We also have an audited financial statement, they used that to rank us in quarter three too. So they should have known these things are available and that our website was probably going through an upgrade,” he added.
