Accrual-based International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) are critical to enhancing fiscal transparency, accountability, and comparability in Africa. They enhance governments’ ability to accurately measure public debt, pension liabilities, and arrears, while also reflecting the value in infrastructure installation in schools, hospitals, roads, airports, etc. By capturing the true cost of public service delivery, it strengthens fiscal discipline and enables evidence-based budgeting. Moreover, it builds credibility with lenders, donors, and citizens through the production of internationally comparable financial statements.
However, IPSAS is currently not available in Portuguese, an official language for over 250 million people globally, including several countries in African.
This gap has created a significant barrier for Lusophone African countries, such as Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé & Príncipe, whose governments, institutions, and professionals are unable to fully engage with the standards in their working language. This omission not only creates barriers to understanding but also adversely affects adoption and implementation of Accrual-based IPSAS.
Without official Portuguese translations, Lusophone countries rely on ad hoc, unofficial interpretations, limiting consistency, comparability, and confidence in reporting. This paper calls for urgent translation of IPSAS into Portuguese.