Partners for Transparency (PFT) said that it followed up on the approval by the Egyptian government last weekend of the state's general budget for the fiscal year 2015/2016 in preparation for submitting it to the President of the Republic for approval. The Foundation added in a statement today: Apart from the budget details that require in-depth and objective analysis, the Foundation You see that the government of Eng. Ibrahim Mahlab has not been keen to provide mechanisms for community participation in the process of preparing the state’s general budget, as political alignment required the government to overcome the parliament’s absence gap by more involvement of national stakeholders in discussing the budget and arranging its priorities and biases. PFT has some measures taken by the Ministry of Finance before preparing the budget, specifically issuing a citizen's budget guide, issuing a preliminary budget statement explaining the general framework within which the budget is prepared, and it considers that they are good steps calculated for the ministry, but it has reservations about not allocating enough time to discuss the budget in the mass media. Before it was approved by the Council of Ministers and submitted to the President of the Republic, the Foundation requested the Ministry of Finance to issue a simple budget guide. The State General Assembly for the fiscal year 2015/2016 includes specific numbers related to the expected revenues and items of expenditure, in order to achieve the required transparency principle, and to enable citizens to hold government authorities accountable during the next fiscal year. The Foundation stated that this is the fifth year in a row after the January 2011 revolution in which it recognized The Egyptian government is the state’s general budget in the absence of an elected parliament, and with the exception of the fiscal year 2012/2013 in which the parliament participated in part in approving its general budget, all other budgets, including the budget for the next fiscal year 2015/2016 were approved without submitting to the elected body that is constitutionally mandated to approve The budget.