This presentation was made by Astri Tverstol, Norway, at the 17th Annual Meeting of OECD Senior Management Officials held at the OECD, Paris, on 2-3 March 2017

1. Norwegian Ministry of Finance
Norwegian Ministry
of Finance
Deputy Director General Astri Tverstøl
OECD Accruals Symposium, March 2nd, 2017
Cash vs. accrual accounting in the Norwegian
central government – recent developments

2. Norwegian Ministry of Finance
Cash based general government accounts - voluntary use of
accrual accounting at agency level
• Individual agencies are free to choose between accrual and cash based
accounting for their own supplementary financial statements
• accrual standards at agency level established 2010
• revised and made mandatory for agencies using accrual accounting in 2015
• so far only used by 64 out of 197 agencies – or about one in three
• the majority of these are in the higher education sector
• these agencies report only net results to central government, neutralizing
the problem of dual accounting principles
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3. Norwegian Ministry of Finance
• Central government accounting remains
cash based
• In December 2015, an expert commission
recommended mandatory use of accruals
at agency level
• The subsequent public hearing gave
mixed feedback
– Agencies cited worries about costs of
introducing accruals, and expressed concern
that benefits would not match costs
– Political concerns about growing bureaucracy
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4. Norwegian Ministry of Finance
Future work
From the 2017 Budget Proposition to the
Storting:
The Ministry of Finance will therefore continue its
efforts for simplification, streamlining and publishing
to increase the benefits and reduce the costs
associated with accruals (...)
The government does not take a position on imposing
mandatory accruals now. The proposal will be
reassessed within three years when simplification
measures have been implemented.
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