The message was expressed by the Secretary of State for the Budget and Public Investment, Juciene de Sousa, in the first session of this year to publicize the 2023 Citizens Budget, an exercise carried out since 2018.
According to Juciene de Sousa, the publication of the Citizens Budget has been fruitful, as it facilitates "a clearer and broader understanding of how the State obtains and uses its resources".
"In fact, we have been making and publishing this simplified version of the General State Budget for several years now. But we want it to have more visibility and, therefore, more utility, as a way of strengthening the financial literacy of all Angolan women and men", she mentioned.
Juciene de Sousa underlined that reinforcing financial literacy is very important for increasing citizen awareness.
"To be a citizen is to be aware, based on complete and reliable information, about our rights and duties as citizens, thus participating actively and civically in all community issues", stressed the official, adding that "better informed citizens and more aware are also more demanding citizens".
"More demanding citizens, equipped with rigorous knowledge and credible information, demand more and better from those who govern them and, therefore, help to improve governance", she stressed.
The Secretary of State stressed that the strategy for disseminating the Citizen's Budget includes lectures and other actions aimed, in particular, at young students and members of youth associations of civil society, held at high schools and universities in the various provinces.
In turn, the Unicef representative in Angola, Ivan Yerovi, considered that this initiative contributes to increasing budgetary financial literacy and strengthening transparency in budgetary matters.
"The General State Budget must be a document where each citizen must have their aspirations or needs reviewed. Hence the importance of exercises like these, which demonstrate not only the commitment to transparency, but also ensure citizen participation, who at the end of the day is the main beneficiary of any action, project, program included in the budget", he said.
Ivan Yerovi underlined that the United Nations agency supports institutions defending the rights of the child to examine budget proposals, as well as execution reports, and promotes citizen monitoring of expenditures and results, through the preparation and publication of summaries. budget.
"In the specific case of Angola, support for the development and dissemination of the Citizens Budget is part of the memorandum of understanding between Unicef and Minfin [Ministry of Finance] focused on actions that promote transparency and public participation in the budget cycle and in communication about the importance of the General State Budget for children and young people and the general public, in simple and accessible language to ensure greater engagement of beneficiaries", he expressed.
The Unicef representative in Angola stressed the importance of the Citizens Budget because "it presents data on the approved budget and this is crucial to support budget planning in the future and to monitor to what extent the commitments assumed by the budget are being translated into direct actions to benefit children and young people".
Regarding the 2023 General State Budget, Ivan Yerovi said that it appears that in the budget allocation for the social sector, education was the one that absorbed the largest share, having stood at 32.6 percent, followed by health with 27.7 percent and housing and community services with 22.9 percent.
"In turn, social protection occupied 14.2 percent. This increase is notorious and it is expected that it will have a positive impact on the lives of families, particularly children", he pointed out.
Another note to be highlighted in this Citizens Budget has to do with the priority of policies that contribute positively to gender equality, "thus bringing a gender perspective into the budget process", he noted.
