Is the Move to Accrual Based Accounting a Real Priority for Public Sector Accounting

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, there have been sustained calls for governments to move towards accrual based accounting and to adopt private-sector-style financial statements. Indeed, this move has become some what of a trend or fashion and accrual accounting was described recently as the hero of the day at an academic conference on public sector financial reporting.However, accrual accounting should not be considered in isolation, but as part of a package of reforms which have come to be known as New Pubic Management. Accrual accounting is not an end in itself, but rather, a means of shifting the emphasis of the budgetary process away from cash inputs, towards outputs and outcomes, in the hope that this will result in greater management efficiencies, and hence, better outcomes for governments and the communities they serve. The move to accrual accounting is primarily aimed at facilitating contestability or competition in the provision of public sector services. Thus it aims to allow comparisons of the current cost of providing the service with potential alternative providers of these services from either the public, not-for-profit or private sectors.

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