Annual Financial Reporting by Governments - What is Good Practice in Africa?

Along with the auditor’s report, a government’s annual financial statements provide the essential financial data necessary for accountability purposes. It is the prime document enabling parliaments and citizens to hold their governments to account for their management its financial resources.

This study aims to identify and collate existing good practice in terms of annual financial reporting by governments in sub-Saharan Africa. As such, it is a bottom-up study of annual financial statements as an aid to developing international accounting standards for governments in the global south. There have been a range of studies on public financial management in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, but few of these provide details of how governments report annually on their financial management.

The international accounting standard promoted for governments of sub-Saharan Africa is the Cash Basis IPSAS, but it is not based on existing good practice and, as a result, not a single government globally has actually been able to implement its key requirements. Similarly, in Africa at least 31 governments have tried to implement the standard, but none have actually implemented its key mandatory requirements (nearly nine years after the standard was issued). This standard is now planned to be revised and we hope that the results of this research will facilitate this process.

Draft report now available from: http://tinyurl.com/esaag2012