Plans to harmonise public finance reporting published

19 Oct 12

Proposals aimed at creating a single integrated approach to how government accountants and statisticians report public sector accounting information have been published for consultation by the International Federation of Accountants.

By Nick Mann | 19 October 2012

The plans aim to reduce differences between the Government Finance Statistics guidelines used by government statisticians to report public sector finances and the International Public Sector Accounting Standards. The IPSAS have been developed to improve the quality of financial reporting of public sector organisations.

According to IFAC’s IPSAS Board, which has developed the proposals in conjunction with statistical bodies such as Eurostat, using integrated financial information systems to produce both IPSAS financial statements and GFS reports can save money, costs and effort.

It can also improve the source data used by statisticians to prepare GFS reports, therefore improving the quality of data used for policy making. Using high-quality audited financial data prepared on an accrual basis is a matter of urgency in light of how the sovereign debt crisis developed, the IPSAS Board explained.

Andreas Bergmann, chair of the board, said: ‘Both governments’ general purpose financial reports and their financial statistics on the general government sector provide important information about governments’ finances.’

‘This consultation paper shows that there is further scope to reduce differences between IPSAS and GFS reporting guidelines, with benefits to the users of both types of reports.’

He added: ‘It also proposes practical ways that governments can improve their management of such differences, so as to efficiently generate data for both their IPSAS financial statements and GFS reports from the same integrated financial information system.’

As well as outlining the differences between the GFS reporting guidelines and IPSAS, the consultation paper has identified opportunities for harmonising the two approaches. The paper is open for comment until March 31 2013.