The guest speaker to a breakfast seminar hosted by PwC Namibia in Windhoek is Hayfron Aboagye, an Associate Director from the PwC Ghana Office. He holds a Masters degree in Public Administration and is a qualified chartered accountant. He has over 15 years’ experience in the provision of assurance services to
various government ministries, NGOs and donor-funded projects in several countries, such as Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, Sierra-Leone and Liberia.
Mr Aboagye was involved in IPSAS projects, published articles on IPSAS and was involved in an IPSAS thought leadership handbook.
More attention and focus are being placed on the financial reporting of public institutions, like governments, international bodies and public entity enterprises. As in the private sector, major overhauling of accounting standards by public institutions, is becoming increasingly relevant and necessary.
As private firms have adopted IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards), so an International Public Sector Accounting Standards – IPSAS – for short – has been independently developed.
The preparation of transparent financial statements is an important tool for governments and public entities (such as state-owned enterprises) to demonstrate their accountability towards taxpayers. As stakeholders, such as credit rating bodies and the World Bank increasingly become relevant to a country’s economic status, the need for governments and public entities to adopt an internationally acceptable and consistent accounting framework becomes increasingly essential.
The use of IPSAS include the following benefits:
a) Facilitates comparison among public entities, governments and international organisations;
b) Improves financial accountability, transparency and governance; and
c) Enhance the quality and credibility of financial reporting.
IPSAS further provides complimentary information to government’s and public entities’ budgets, improves result-based management and give a better reflection of internal costs for monitoring public resources.
Implementation of accrual based IPSAS ensures that information relating to government and public entity assets as well as liabilities are properly tracked and reported in financial statements.
African countries so far that have adopted IPSAS include Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. South Africa’s accounting framework is embedded in IPSAS. International bodies, such as the United Nations, EU, OECD and NATO too have adopted IPSAS.
With increasing demands from stakeholders for more transparency and accountability from public sector entities and governments, it seems the only way is to embrace transparency by adopting and implementing IPSAS.
PwC has years of experience and is well-qualified in developing the required technical training to clients, focusing on clients with financial background as well as individuals in general management roles. Our teams combine all the necessary competencies for the success of client projects, such as accounting, processes, internal control, reporting, IT, training (including change management processes) and communication.
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PwC Namibia is Namibian owned and managed, and a member of PwC Africa with global links; committed to helping our clients meet the challenges posed by the global economy. We are the largest knowledge businesses in Namibia – a leader in every market in which we operate. PwC Namibia currently employ over 230 designated Namibians, which represents 78% of the firm’s total number of employees. PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.
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