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Municipal finances visualised for the public

Brief
Local finances (Lokalne finansije) is a project initiated by the Ministry of Finances of Montenegro and supported by the UNDP and the Ministry of Finances of Slovak Republic. The website we’ve built serves the public audience and educates on finances of all municipalities in Montenegro. Montenegrin citizens are now able to find and perceive municipal financial data more easily. The website will increase efficiency and transparency of all local budgets and offer a new way for the public to monitor financial data in their city.
Results
Our team worked hard on creating a system for visualising and updating the financial data. By thinking on how to represent such a diverse data set with comparisons that sometimes lacked data was a challenge we were up against. Our biggest results are best depicted in words of the organisations behind it. UNDP Resident Representative Daniela Gasparikova said that the portal will help citizens, civil society and all interested parties to exercise their right to monitoring, planning, budgeting and execution of public finances at the local level. H.E. Boris Gandel, the Ambassador of the Slovak Republic in Montenegro called the project “Another step towards its European future” Ms Snežana Mugoša Director at the Directorate for Local Self-Government and State-owned companies at the Ministry of Finance of Montenegro pointed out that “The portal is a one-stop location, where all financial data are consolidated and displayed in a simple and visually appealing way” The portal provides instant access to the current and historical financial data, featuring an overview of the summary data including revenues, expenditures, arrears and debts of all municipalities in Montenegro, over the 2009 to 2019 period. Besides, it provides a detailed comparative overview of individual budgetary items of all municipalities in Montenegro, within the same reference period. The new portal which will be updated annually is developed under UNDP project “Strengthening Transparent and Accountable Public Finance Management in Montenegro”.