Thursday 31 May 2012

18 Governments Adopt Accrual Accounting by 2012

I currently have a post on the IMF Public Financial Management Blogspot which you may care to have a look at, please provide your own comment if appropriate:
http://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/2012/05/what-accounting-standards-for-governments-of-the-global-south.html#more

I am in the process of developing a longer paper on annual financial reporting by governments – please contact me if you would like to see a copy at this stage.

I have also done a bit of research on those governments which have adopted the accrual basis for their financial statements.  The only 18 countries which have actually issued accrual based financial statements for their central government ministries are as follows:


  • Spain (1989) – national standards (IPSAS from 2011)
  • New Zealand (1991) - IFRS  
  • Australia (1994) - IFRS
  • USA (1998) – national standards
  • UK (2002) - IFRS
  • Canada (2003) – national standards   
  • Latvia (2003) – national standards
  • Estonia (2004) – national standards
  • France (2006) – national standards
  • Colombia (2006) – national standards
  • Romania (2006) – national standards
  • Switzerland (2007) - IPSAS
  • Denmark 2007) – national standards
  • Slovak Republic (2008) - IPSAS
  • Cayman Islands (2008) – national standards
  • Lithuania (2009) – national standards
  • Czech Republic (2009) – national standards
  • Barbados (2012) – national standards.

I would be pleased if you were able to amend, update or correct this list.