The one-day workshop, convened in Geneva by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) last week, drew 80 leading public finance experts from across the world to consider the practical implementation of IPSAS.

It considered the current progress on IPSAS implementation and countries’ capacity-building needs, as well as technical aspects of the standards, good practice and lessons learned so far.

In her opening remarks, Tatiana Krylova, head of UNCTAD’s enterprise branch, said IPSAS was important in making public sector accounting and reporting stronger and more robust and improving consistency and comparability.

CIPFA international chair Ian Ball gave the keynote address. He said: “IPSAS does a lot more than produce annual reports on the accrual basis. The reason to introduce IPSAS is also to have better financial management within the governments and better fiscal policy decision making.”

Alta Prinsolo, chief operating officer at the International Federation of Accountants, also spoke at the 4 November workshop.

“High-quality, decision-useful, easy-to-access, accrual-based financial information is the cornerstone of sound public finance management,” she said.