Wednesday, July 18, 2007

GAAP for governments


Clare Lockhart, the founder of the Institute of State Effectiveness, calls, in an FT article for remodeling of government financial management system to resemble the private sector model:

The World Bank and its partners should turn their focus from corruption within World Bank-funded projects to financial systems as a whole.

The mechanism would be simple. States would be required to publish online an annual report setting out their income and expenditure, provide a balance sheet of assets and liabilities and outline which public assets had been sold to whom, at what price and through what process.

Unless state resources are firmly evaluated and monitored we should not be surprised if […] developing countries are subject to Enron-type collapse.


See full Article.