The Last Empires by William Allan

Author:William Allan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Some rationalization of the allocation of resources to different elements of the proposed integrated strategy will be needed. IMF surveillance activities will benefit considerably from an emphasis on improved data standards, but its association with technical assistance and development lending needs to be coordinated carefully with the activities of technical assistance teams. The latter often involve several organizations. A coordinated technical emphasis on establishing robust systems for measuring and validating accounting transactions (and eventually all forms of value creation) seems likely to lead to stronger cooperation than the often dissociated assessments of PFM practice in the past. Ultimately, the benefits should be realized in terms of better fiscal and economic data—and eventually a better measure of social well-being through a UN-led reform of the GDP measure.

A continuing survey of the extent to which international standards for measuring value creation and attendant risks are being adopted and used in social policy would give a leading and objectively measurable indicator of the status of government reform. The World Bank-led Accounting and Auditing component of the S&C Initiative at present focuses on assessment of country practices with respect to application to corporations of IASB accounting standards and IFAC International Standards on Auditing. Given that the basic thrust of the <IR> initiative is to broaden the base for both corporate and government accounting and thus to narrow the differences between them, there appears to be a strong case for building a core program aimed at a continuing survey across public and private sectors of country adoption of accruals, BSA , whole-of-government and <IR> as the central driver of system reform, illustrated in Fig. 4.3.

How then to move forward? Any action must engage with practical experience and the realities of present-country administration. A practical possibility could be to undertake a pilot series of country studies to refine principles of reform for countries at different levels of PFM capacity; each participating country should have clearly articulated goals to improve that capacity. Such studies should involve the main multilateral and bilateral agencies now promoting better PFM practice standards. They should aim to identify ways in which PFM assessment methodologies could be better coordinated and streamlined to minimize overlap and improve integration with country-led PFM reform strategies. No doubt many enhancements can be suggested, but we need to move forward in this direction to capitalize on the reform efforts that are already underway.

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