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GHANA WEATHER

Public sector accountants sensitised on IPSAS

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The International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) has come to stay and Ghanaian Accountants must embrace and practice it or be left out of the profession, the Controller and Accountant General, Eugene Asante Ofosuhene, has hinted.

According to him, the International Public Sector Accounting Standards is a global set of standards issued by the IPSAS Board of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) to regulate and guide the preparation, presentation and disclosure including recognition and measurement of general purpose statements in the public sector the world over.

Opening a 2-day sensitization and end educational seminar for Accountants and Finance Officers of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA’S) in Accra, the Controller and Accountant General disclosed that the standards applied to all Public Sector entities other than Government business and State Owned Enterprises set up for commercial purposes.

He urged the Accountants, Finance and Treasury Officers to open up their minds and accept the changes as there was no way they could practice the accountancy profession from 2023 when Ghana would have become fully compliant with the standards and that so far over 100 countries across the globe had signed onto it including 15 African countries.

Welcoming the participants to the seminar, Kwasi Owusu, Deputy Controller and Accountant General in charge of Financial Management Services and Chairman of the IPSAS Implementation Committee in Ghana outlined the benefits of IPSAS to include an improvement in transparency by providing complete view of Government business and performance and ensuring high level of accountability by accurately recording Government performance status.

Other benefits he observed, are the provision of greater credibility as Governments use same accounting standards globally and guides equitable matching of cost to revenue by depreciation of fixed assets and that it also leads to more effective monitoring of the existence and value of assets and liabilities.

In a presentation, Dr. Williams Atuliq, Vice President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG), regulators of the IPSAS implementation in Ghana told the participants that the new standards ensure better decision making for Governments by using quality information as well as harmonize accounting reports and statements across nations.

In its efforts to further strengthen the Public Sector Financial Management reforms, Ghana adopted IPSAS in 2014 but formally launched its implementation in late 2018 and is expected to be fully compliant in 2023. The implementation is under the supervision of the Controller and Accountant General’s Department with the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG) as regulators.

Story by Kweku Sersah-Johnson

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