19th October 2021, Skopje – Sound, effective and accountable public sector institutions are of crucial importance for establishing stable economic environment and sustainable growth, as proven amid COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, main goal of keeping budget accounting and budget reporting is crucial in managing the Budget and attaining financial responsibility when preparing and adopting the business policies and decisions, i.e. balanced budget spending from the actual available funds.
This was underlined by Deputy Minister of Finance, Dimitar Kovachevski, having his address at the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) Training organized by CEF – Center of Excellence in Finance, being held on Tuesday in Ohrid.
He announced that Ministry of Finance, plans, by the end of 2022, to carry out reforms in the field of budget accounting to the end of replacing the “cash-basis principle” with the so – called “modified accounting principle”.
“In line with the “modified accounting principle”, expenditures will be recorded when a transaction occurs in the reporting period, rather than when payment is made, whereby revenues will continue to be recorded when being collected. Such recording concept will provide for more realistic and up-to-date monitoring of budget users’ arrears, which will be applied in the State Treasury by implementing the new Financial Management Information System”, Kovachevski said.
He pointed out that public sector accountants play important role in the daily operations and the decision-making processes of the institutions, given that they record, report, supervise and adjust the government funds, thereby providing crucial inputs for assessing the financial flows and making the respective decisions.
“Nowadays, we cannot imagine the public sector operations and the performance of its functions, activities and tasks without high-quality accounting information thereon. Therefore, it is often pointed out that accounting is the language of business and everyone playing a significant role in the public sector business processes should understand this language. Accounting, financial reporting and detection of accounting information are important assumptions of the good practice of financial management in the public sector”, Deputy Minister of Finance said.
He underlined that exactly such trainings are of essential significance so as to understand IPSAS in the process of replacing the cash-basis principle when keeping budget accounting with the accounting principle, thereby adding that accounting profession-related reform is planned to be launched in 2022, which will cover introduction of mandatory training and passing exam for performing accounting affairs in the public sector.
Training and exam for public sector accountants organized by CEF are the only of this kind, which are being organized in the Republic of North Macedonia, yielding solid results. Ministry of Finance expects for the cooperation with CEF to continue in the field of training and certification of accountants, as well as throughout the preparatory activities geared towards implementing national certification of public sector accountants under the Public Finance Academy.
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