Ondo partners World Bank on capacity building

THE Ondo State government in collaboration with the World Bank has organized a six weeks capacity building in Akure for state’s Accountant-General, Auditor-General, Parastatals and other agencies.

Chief Executive Officer of JK Consulting Co. Ltd, Kayode Naiyeju said the training is for the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) for transparency and accountability in governance.

The training, which has started in the 36 states of the Federation, as in preparation for full implantation of IPSAS.

According to him, IPSAS will complement the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari to vehemently fight against corruption and, instill transparency and accountability in governance.

He noted that the IPSAS initiative was adopted in 2010 by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for implementation by 2014, “which we have adopted and implementing but have decided now that the accrual should be adopted in January 2016.”

According to him, “The difference between cash and accrual is that, cash will not give you the true picture. By the time you adopt the accrual, it will give a true picture, then the assets of government can now be seen. In IPSAS accrual, you will know the asset and you will know the opening and closing balance. People will be more transparent.

“What we are practising now is the IPSAS cash. If you look at government, a lot of money is wasted on aids and grants because they don’t report it. In IPSAS accrual, assets, liability, aids and grants will be reported,” he said.

The financial expert defined accrual as “the totality of everything: cash, account payable, account receivable, asset and liability.”
Kehinde Shogunle, another resource person with JK Consulting and former Commissioner for Finance in Ogun State, explained that in line with the FEC directive that all financial statement in all the three tiers of government must be IPSAS compliant, the auditors too will tremendously benefit from the training.