Transparency and public disclosure practices of publicly owned enterprises in Hungary

Within the framework of Open Society Institute’s “Policy Responses to Populism and Intolerance” Programme, Transparency International-Hungary, in partnership with the Budapest Institute, has launched a 3-year research, advocacy, and monitoring project on the transparency requirements of state owned enterprises (SOE) in order to promote good practices in public disclosure in Hungary. The project’s main goal is to enhance transparency of the SOEs through advocating a more effective legal framework, implementation of self-regulation, and better disclosure practices. Budapest Institute acted as a consultant and quality reviewer in this project, and provided methodological advice on the research plan and implementation.

For the project results, see the research papers prepared by CRCB and TI Hungary here and here.

In the follow up pilot project we investigated the practices of a Hungarian municipality in partnership with the TI Hungary. Through interviews and mapping websites we evaluated the transparency and public information disclosure practices of companies in which the city of Szeged is a majority shareholder. The main finding of the evaluation is that there is only small  difference between local and national public companies in terms of transparency. While the best local companies are just as transparent as the top national companies, the least transparent local companies are better than the worst national companies in terms of transparency. In general, companies publish basic information such as their address, data on management and the supervisory board, but they often fail to disclose contracts and data on public procurement procedures. There is a wide range of solutions to increase transparency that have low costs and could be implemented in the short term. We have heavily relied on good practices while drafting our policy recommendations for the local companies and the local authority in Szeged.