Government-by-Government Assessments: Suriname
During the review period, the government made significant progress in four areas: (1) publishing a budget that included major sources of revenue and expenditure; (2) ensuring actual revenues and expenditures reasonably correspond to those in the enacted budget; (3) ensuring budget documents were prepared according to internationally accepted principles; and (4) publishing an audit that covered the entire annual executed budget. The government made its executive budget proposal and the enacted budget easily accessible to the public but did not make its end-of-year budget report publicly available. Information on debt obligations was publicly available, including for the sole state-owned enterprise. The government generally followed internationally accepted accounting principles, but it continued to treat loans as revenues. The government maintained off-budget accounts not subject to oversight. The supreme audit institution generally met international standards of independence but lacked the authority and capacity to conduct and publish timely audits. The government specified in law or regulation the criteria and procedures for awarding natural resource extraction contracts and licenses but did not appear to follow these procedures in the mining sector specifically. Basic information on natural resource extraction awards was publicly available. The sovereign wealth fund had a sound legal framework. There are no funds in it, however, and therefore its source of funding and general approach to withdrawals were not disclosed.
Suriname’s fiscal transparency would be improved by:
- Publishing an end-of-year budget report;
- Subjecting off-budget accounts to oversight; and
- Ensuring applicable laws and regulations for contracting and licensing in natural resource extraction are followed in practice;