Financial Reporting of Socio-Economic Measures Related to the Covid 19 Pandemic. Romania’s Experience in the IPSAS Harmonisation Process

Covid19 pandemic has a major impact both on social and economic levels of society, national and international and governments around the world adopted measures for supporting and protecting citizens, employees and economic entities. Romania, ex-communist country and full member of European Union since 2007, has also adopted a portfolio of measures to counteract the negative effects of pandemic. When implementing these measures governmental authorities in Romania involve significant financial resources and their management and use should be done with maximum of accountability, credibility and transparency. The objective of this chapter is to research the harmonization degree of Romanian public sector accounting regulations to IPSAS when disclosing data on pandemic social and economic measures. The research reviews the dedicated literature, the public sector accounting in Romania and socio-economic measures adopted by government authorities during the pandemic period. De jure harmonisation of public sector accounting regulations in Romania to IPSAS is analysed in order to identify the disclosure degree of governmental socio-economic measures for pandemic context. Results reveal a relatively low degree of harmonization with IPSAS (IPSAS 19, IPSAS 39, IPSAS 42), but it also mention the openness of the national regulators for updating public sector accounting norms to the present pandemic context as well as the intention of further steps in the IPSAS harmonization process.