What is Government Spending Watch?
Government Spending Watch (GSW) - a joint initiative by Development Finance International and Oxfam – tracks spending and publishes information across seven sectors related to the delivery of the SDGs: agriculture, education, environment, gender, health, social protection and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene).
In addition, we have data on debt servicing and defence spending, which enables users to compare spending on SDG related sectors to this.
What's different about Government Spending Watch?
Government Spending Watch is the only global, comprehensive and up-to-date database on government spending on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Some organisations publish data tracking spending on one sector, but not all, and often this data has a delay of two years. This makes Government Spending Watch a truly unique resource. It offers comparable data on the latest spending (typically the current year’s budget) across a number of sectors and multiple countries.
GSW exists because we believe that there is an urgent need for a much clearer picture of government spending, and for citizens, and their representatives in parliaments and civil society organisations, to have access to comprehensive and timely data, so that they can hold their governments to account.
The data are published either on this website or through analysis and reports, in order to help increase transparency and accountability. The complete GSW data sets have data available from 2008 allowing tracking and analysis over time. However, due to database and funding constraints, only the most recent data - for the years 2021 to 2023 - allows the latest years to be accessed by everyone for the most current and up-to-date picture in the public domain.
The rest of our data are published in reports and shared with partners. Our data are used by various organisations, from the UN to national civil society organisations.
What data are available through Government Spending Watch, and how are they compiled?
Currently, the GSW data-set covers 80 -low and middle- income countries.
Compiling the data-set requires a lengthy exercise of investigative data-gathering from public and semi-public budget-related documents. The transparency of documents and information on which to base this can make identifying SDG spending very difficult, so we work with a network of government officials to interpret and classify data using a complex, consistent methodology, and ruthlessly exclude data where they are unclear.
Data are disaggregated by type of spending (recurrent vs investment), and source of funding (government vs donor). The data on this site are presented in national currency, US$ equivalents, constant and current prices, as a percentage of GDP and total spending, and per capita.
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The site is jointly sponsored by Development Finance International (DFI) and Oxfam. They aim to build a wider coalition of sponsors over time for this vital initiative. For more information on the sponsoring organizations, see www.development-finance.org and www.oxfam.org respectively.