As a small nation, The Bahamas should be in a position to be on the leading edge when it comes to changing the accountability and transparency of the public sector.

New Zealand, a small country in the relative scheme of things, has provided a great model for The Bahamas to consider.

There is an excellent summary of the New Zealand experience available at the International Monetary Fund web site, that opens as follows:

Accountability, Transparency Key to New Zealand Reforms

With sweeping and sustained reforms, New Zealand has recently retooled its economy. A centerpiece of this process has been a bold restructuring of the public sector. How was momentum built and popular support retained? Marco Cangiano, in an IMF Working Paper, Accountability and Transparency in the Public Sector: The New Zealand Experience, reviews these reforms and concludes that commitment to transparency and accountability helped win, and retain, public acceptance. It also enabled policymakers, over time, to shift the focus of fiscal policy from short-term stabilization to a framework that encouraged pursuit of efficiency in expenditure and taxation and responsible longer-term policies. [More…(pdf)]

For a more in depth analysis click this link… passed on by a friend.

If The Bahamas would only consider the New Zealand “Public Finance Act of 1989” initially, that would be a great start.

What I really like about the act is that it includes provisions for Government financial reporting to be conducted as the private sector does, using the internationally accepted accounting principles.

This would make government budgets as well as revenue and expediture information easier to understand and more transparent.

In other words, the public sector would have to operate its accounts like the private sector does, and more specifically, like publicly traded companies have to do.

Here’s hoping.

Thanks to JB for the pdf.