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According to the results of the survey by the Centre for Law and Democracy, Armenia joined the top 5 countries among 80 with easy-to-access budget information, says the report published on the website of the organization. The results of the Ask Your Government! 6 Question Campaign survey showed that only 12 out of 80 countries responded to all 6 questions in a way that complies with right to information standards, for example by answering the requester within 30 calendar days.

The top 5 performing countries are New Zealand (1st place), Georgia, India, Namibia and Armenia. Among the top 15 are Colombia, Ukraine, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, South Africa, Costa Rica and Germany.

The results of the survey show that complete information was provided by Armenia on 5 of the 6 questions, and only one question was followed by a “not held.” Thus, Armenia gained total of 6 points on compliance, and 5 points on positive response.

Noteworthy that Azerbaijan provided information only on the two of the questions, including one incomplete response. There was mute refusal on one question, and three questions were followed by a “not held” response. For example, for the questions 1 and 2 the Ministry of Health of Azerbaijan simply wrote that it could not respond “because of lack of suitable statistics.”

As noted by the organization, top performing countries included a number of new democracies and/or countries with young right to information laws, which indicates that recent campaigns to promote the right to information have a positive effect on performance.