Government Financial Accounting And The Construction Of Local Government Balance Sheet

The National Audit Office of the People’s Republic of China started a new round of audit work nationwide on Aug.l2013. Up to the end of2013, the result had not been published. And this raised concerns about the debt of local governments of the officers the scholar and the public. And one of the main reasons that led to the rapid accumulation of debt of local governments was the shortage of the current governmental accounting system.In recent years, with the dramatic progress of the construction of our nation’s socialist market economy and the expanding of the depth and broadness of the development and corporation of our nation’s participation in the world economy, the current governmental accounting system has become to be unsatisfied with the needs of accounting information from the government the enterprises and the public. On the national financial work conference in2012the finance minister of China thought that the reform of the government accounting system should be propelled and the establishment of a comprehensive governmental accounting report system should be accelerated. According to the overseas experience the governmental accounting included two parts:one is the governmental budgetary accounting to reflect the budget condition; another is the governmental finance accounting to reflect the financeactivities of the governments. We now have the governmental budgetary accounting system but has not established the a system of governmental finance accounting system.According to the overseas experience, some western countries including New Zealand and the USA have started to explore in the reform of the governmental accounting system from since the1980s. The main reason to reform is the new public management movement in order to improve the finance conditions and the operating efficiency of those countries. And the core of the new public management movement is to apply the methods of governing an enterprise into the governing of a government and appraise the performance of the government. As the degree of internationalization of China become higher, the current governmental accounting system has shown many shortages, so the reform is imperative. The author believed that the key point of the following reform is to perfect the current governmental accounting system, that’s to say, to build a governmental finance accounting system. This finance accounting system should provide objective accurate and fair presentation of the asset and debt condition the operating condition of the government. Further there should be a reporting system to report relevant information.