During the presentation by Mr Krafchik it was noted that the Open Budget Index, which looked at the role of parliaments in ensuring budget transparency and accountability, ranked South Africa amongst the top five countries in the world in respect of having sufficient information available for their citizens on the budget and who had sufficient budgetary oversight. The other countries in the top five were France, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was noted that the more dependent a country was on overseas development aid the less budgetary transparency was available. It was encouraging to note that several developing countries were however moving towards greater budgetary transparency and accountability. It was noted that parliaments should ensure that national budgetary accounts were made public, follow up on annual audit reports, develop strategic partnerships between their parliament, civil society and audit institutions, develop codes of practice for greater budget transparency and contribute to a change in donor practices in order that international aid was properly reflected during the budgetary exercise.