The report sought views of 1,500 ACCA members and affiliates globally, asking them how they felt governments responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and how PFM must now evolve to deal with future crises.
Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) depends on
the effectiveness of governments and their management of the public
purse.
There are important lessons to learn from the
Covid-19 crisis for governments and the resilience of their approach to
public financial management (PFM), says ACCA (the Association of
Chartered Certified Accountants) in a new report Rethinking public financial management.
Launched to coincide with ACCA’s annual Virtual Public Sector Conference
(1 – 2 December 2021), the report explains that a government’s ability
to do anything depends on the strength of its PFM system - how it
prepares budgets, obtains financing, spends money, and keeps its
accounts.
And to meet ongoing challenges such as Covid-19 and meeting the UN
SDGs, it’s essential that governments have the right, skilled people in
place to do this very necessary work.
Alex Metcalfe, ACCA’s head of public sector and co-author of the
report explains: ‘It’s a significant risk to a government’s success if
it doesn’t have the right number and quality of public finance
professionals. To benefit from their improved PFM systems, governments
may need to make a significant and sustained investment in their PFM
systems, and also in competent public finance professionals who will
advise on future decisions.’
Gary Bandy, a PFM specialist and co-author adds: ‘Financial
management is critical to the delivery of public services and
sustainability of economies. The pandemic has led to lessons for
governments about what did and what didn’t work as well as expected. We
offer recommendations for a way ahead as it would be a real opportunity
missed to learn from the pandemic if governments returned to a pre-Covid
status quo for their PFM arrangements.’
The report sought views of 1,500 ACCA members and affiliates
globally, asking them how they felt governments responded to the
Covid-19 pandemic and how PFM must now evolve to deal with future
crises.
Respondents also said that the four most commonly faced challenges by governments were:
- responding to the financial needs of individuals and businesses (45%)
- being able to transition to remote working (42%)
- having the necessary technological/ digital capacity (42%)
- maintaining accountability and transparency of government spending (41%)
Respondents in North America, the Middle East and Western Europe were
much more positive about the effectiveness of their public sector
institutions than respondents from other regions. Looking at sectors,
public sector respondents – 62% – were much more likely than those in
the private or not-for-profit sectors (42% and 37%) to agree that their
government had made an effective response to the pandemic.
ACCA
© ACCA - Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
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