Some data missing. In most sectors countries have some data missing. Education, health and agriculture have information available for roughly 70% of countries. Environment and agriculture have marginally less information available, 43% and 51% respectively. WASH and gender are far harder to gather information on with only 31 countries n WASH and 13 in gender having sector information available. Data on budget plans is much more accessible than on actual spending, so it’s more likely that we will have information for planned spend.
Sector specific information about missing data
Nearly 90% of countries have planned data available for the agriculture sector. This means that data availability is good, with agriculture coming just behind education and health in terms of amount of information available. This tends to be due to clear ministries/sub ministries/agencies dealing with agriculture, and therefore clear budget lines for agriculture.
Data on debt servicing is available for 64 countries in the database, and is sourced separately from the rest of GSW data (see data source page link and explanation at the end of this section for more information). The data is only available for planned 2013, and is not broken down recurrent/capital or government/donor (given it is all government funded and recurrent). It is drawn from IMF LIC-Debt Sustainability Framework and MIC-Debt Sustainability Framework annexes, as well as other budget tables, in IMF staff country reports for 2014 and 2015.
Data on defence spending is available for 44 GSW countries and is sourced separately from the rest of GSW data (see data source page link and explanation at the end of this section for more information). Data for this was taken from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database. This is only available for 2012 and 2013 planned, as this is the latest available information in SIPRI – as soon as 2014 data is available this will be updated.
Information on education, along with health, is by far the most readily available sector data, all countries have some information on education. This reflects the fact that education is generally covered by clear separate education ministries and/or agencies. Sometimes there are several education ministries split into primary or basic, secondary and tertiary, but it is easy to aggregate these.
Primary education is much less easy to find information on than total education spending. This is because many governments do not break down their total budget for education into spending according to different levels – given the MDG goal is on primary education GSW tries to do this where possible but we can only find a total of around 35% of all data available.
Sector data for the environment is less readily available than some sectors, with only 65% countries with data available. Because it is often split across multiple ministries and agencies it can be hard to identify ‘environment’ spending and programmes and aggregate this data. In some countries, data are less readily available because the spending is only part of some ministries or agencies’ budgets, and they do not publish data in enough detail to allow its compilation according to MDG breakdowns.
Gender data is incredibly difficult to find and track, with only around one-third of countries with data on gender. The difficulty in finding data reflects the fact that gender-related spending is often subsumed into broader social welfare ministries, with insufficient disaggregation to identify specific spending on women.
Information on health, along with education, is by far the most readily available sector data, with over 90% of countries publishing sector level data on health. This reflects the fact that health is generally covered by clear separate health ministries and/or agencies, and even when there are separate agencies dealing with health, such as national AIDS commissions, which are separate from health ministries, this is easy to find and aggregate.
Much like environmental spending, sector data on social protection is less readily available than some sectors with only 65% of countries have information available. However, it is still better than the worst performing sectors. Because it is often split across multiple ministries and agencies it can be hard to identify ‘social protection’ spending and aggregate this data. For 11 countries (Bhutan, Comoros, Djibouti, Guyana, Kiribati, Lesotho, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tonga, and Vanuatu) it has not been possible to compile social protection data.
The WASH sector is the second worst performing sector in terms of transparency and availability of accessible data to compile overall spending with only around half of all countries having data on WASH as a sector. Across WASH the problem arises from spending being hidden as part of a ministry or agency whose remit goes beyond water, sanitation or hygiene; and in multiple different agencies for rural and urban services. Often sanitation sits in health or other areas, while water sits in Ministries combined with energy. It is incredibly difficult to find information on actual spending for WASH. GSW is working with others, including Water Aid to help to improve this information.
