Strengthening national accounting systems

Agenda 21 suggests that agencies dealing with national accounts should cooperate closely with environmental statistics and natural resource departments with a view to assisting national economic analysts and decision makers in charge of national economic planning. National institutions should play a crucial role not only as depositary of the sustainable accounting system but also in its adaptation, establishment and continuous use. Unpaid productive work such as domestic work and child care should be included, where appropriate, in satellite national accounts and economic statistics. Time-use surveys could be a first step in the process of developing these satellite accounts.

Improving the basic accounting system implies recording spending as it occurs. Other improvements include computerization of government payrolls and simple and systematic monitoring of the investment programme. Efforts towards the latter have focused on preparing simple, standardized project profiles containing a concise description of project content and objectives, an unambiguous identifying title and project number, an estimate of total investment costs, a proposed annual phasing of investment costs, and an estimate of recurrent costs arising from the project. If regularly prepared and updated, these simple standardized profiles can be very useful in tracking project spending.