Evolution of the Cash Basis International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS) in Nepal

This paper reviews Nepal?s journey towards the Cash Basis IPSAS and discusses to what extent the standard is relevant to the country. As is the case of other developing countries, Nepal has also witnessed in the last few years a change in the public sector accounting reform agenda of international organisations in particularly the World Bank. The Bank, which was previously advocating for an accrual accounting reform, has now given more emphasis to the Cash Basis IPSAS issued by the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).This is also evident in its GAP analysis in which the Cash Basis IPSAS has been used as a benchmark through which to assess the strengths and weaknesses of accounting practices of developing nations. In many developing countries, the Cash Basis of IPSAS has become a point of departure in the sequencing of public sector accounting reforms, with accrual accounting as the final reform destination (Bietenhader and Bergmann, 2010). The actual number of developing countries embracing the Cash Basis IPSAS has however remained controversial. The IFAC (2010) in its report has claimed that approximately 29 countries, mainly the developing countries, have so far adopted this standard and 15 more countries are considering its adoption in the near future. Others have indicated that the number of governments that have actually implemented the Cash Basis IPSAS is far more limited and that in fact not a single government has actually fully implemented the requirements of the Cash Basis IPSAS (Wynne, 2013). Nepal has been one of the front-runners among developing countries in terms of declaring the adoption of the Cash Basis IPSAS (World Bank, 2011). In September 2009, the government of Nepal announced that a cash basis Nepal Public Sector Accounting Standard (NPSAS), corresponding to the Cash Basis IPSAS, would be implemented in Nepali budgetary entities within the next few years.