THE Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council (CIMC) recently joined civil society organizations (CSOs) and advocacy bodies for an intensive four-day workshop focused on Social Accountability and raising awareness on the importance of a Citizen’s Budget in Papua New Guinea.
A Citizen’s Budget is a simplified, accessible summary of a government’s national budget. It translates complex economic and financial data into clear, non-technical language for the general public, promoting transparency and ensuring citizens can easily track how public funds and tax revenues are spent.
Its purpose is to also enable citizens understanding of the budget information and be empowered to hold decision makers accountable.
The four-day workshop, held from June 22 to June 25 at Grand Papua in Port Moresby, provided a critical platform for civil society including women and youth organizations to actively contribute toward producing PNG’s first-ever Citizen’s Budget, using the 2026 National Budget as a baseline.
Dr. Alma Sedlar, UNDP Chief Technical Advisor (Anti-Corruption), explained that the initiative aims to equip civic organizations with practical oversight skills.
“The purpose of this exercise is to build the capacity of civil society to effectively track and monitor how the government plans and spends public funds,” Dr. Sedlar said.
She added that the practical, hands-on training ensures that a finalized Citizen’s Budget can be successfully delivered toward the end of the year. Dr. Sedlar also noted that a similar series of capacity-building sessions will be rolled out across the country over the coming months, including in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.
Speaking at the event, CIMC Executive Officer Mrs. Wallis Yakam noted that while “Social Accountability” is often treated as a new term in PNG’s development sector, the core practices have long been embedded in local advocacy.
“The public forums we organize and the Sectoral Committees we facilitate are, in many ways, active social accountability mechanisms. We have been doing this work for many years—we simply have not always labeled it as social accountability,” Mrs. Yakam said.
Mrs. Yakam commended the UNDP, under the leadership of Dr. Sedlar, for initiating the program and bringing key stakeholders together.
The workshop was hosted jointly by CIMC and the UNDP and funded under the European Union’s Transparency and Accountability in Papua New Guinea (TAP) project. It forms part of a broader, ongoing series of workshops dedicated to strengthening social accountability and fiscal transparency in the country. Civil Society organizations who participated in the workshop includes, CIMC, Transparency International PNG (TIPNG), Business Coalition for Women (BCFW), PNG Education Advocacy Network (PEAN), Papua Native Landowners Association Incorporated (PNLA), Hope World Wide PNG, Abau Women’s Representative and NCD Diff-Abilities Advocacy Agency.