Implementing Accrual Accounting in the Public Sector prepared by Joe Cavanagh, Suzanne Flynn, and Delphine Moretti published by IMF (9/2016), indicated by Isaias Coelho.
Over the past two decades, a growing number of governments have begun moving away from pure cash accounting toward accrual accounting. While accrual accounting has been the norm among private corporations for over a century, the vast majority of governments prepared their budgets and accounts on a cash basis up until the end of the last century. The recent spread of accrual accounting to the public sector can be attributed to a number of related factors, including: (i) a growing recognition of the limits of pure cash accounting (ii) the development of accrualbased international standards for government fiscal and financial reporting including Government Finance Statistics Manual (GFSM) and International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS);2 (iii) the professionalization of the government accounting cadre and resulting introduction of private sector techniques into the public sector; and (iv) the advent of computerized financial management information systems (FMISs) which greatly reduce the transaction costs of collecting and consolidating accrual-based information. In 2015, 41 governments (21 percent) have completed the transition, 16 governments account on a modified accrual basis (8 percent), 28 governments (17 percent) are on a modified cash basis, and 114 governments (57 percent) remain on pure cash accounting (Figure 1).
