Governança Contábil e seus Reflexos no Planejamento e Controle de Políticas Públicas

Abstract

Governance was born out of the evolutionary process of the capitalist system, in which corporations were developing and becoming ever larger, more complex and with bolder projections, which led to the need to dilute their ownership (fractionation of equity into shares to be acquired by small owners: the shareholders), so that it could obtain more resources to finance its projects. From then on, there was a separation between the company's management (administration) and the owners (shareholders), who did not necessarily have convergent interests within the corporation, but often even antagonistic ones. When there are differences between the interests of these characters, the so-called Agency Conflict or Principal-Agent Conflict arises. The Governance Guide of the Presidency of the Republic lists the following governance principles: 1 – Responsiveness, 2 – Integrity, 3 – Reliability, 4 – Regulatory Improvement, 5 – Accountability and Responsibility, and 6 – Transparency. All these governance principles are related to the accounting activity, especially “Reliability”, “Transparency” and “Accountability and Responsibility”. “Reliability” due to the fact that accounting has the obligation to measure, disclose and record accounting events in a reliable, relevant and useful manner; Transparency, as accounting is responsible for preparing and disclosing reports and financial statements, and “Accountability and Accountability” is one of the objectives of Accounting Applied to the Public Sector – CASP. Audit work by the Court of Auditors of the State of Ceará detected loss of data, information and accounting documents of the end-of-term management, which are fundamental inputs to maintaining the continuity of public services and administrative activities, especially when power is transferred. There was damage to the continuity of several operations, such as maintenance of the chain of accounting records, execution of budgetary expenditure, payments, raising priorities, monitoring of projects, programs and actions, access to bank accounts, among others. The conclusions of these audits pointed out as reasons for these losses, potential or consummated, the lack of a permanent administrative structure, formally instituted with competences defined by law, and not by precarious instrument such as contracts, which contemplated public positions of effective bond of a finalistic nature to the exercise of accounting activity within the scope of Public Administration. The Federal Executive Power, with a view to complying with the Governance Principles, instituted an Accounting System with legal competences and public positions with final accounting attributions, a pioneering structure in Brazil and which has been a paradigm for other entities of the republic. In order to prevent or reduce the risks of Agency Conflict, it is essential that public entities institute and effectively implement Accounting Systems that include an organic structure (agency, sectors, departments), professionals legally qualified to exercise the accounting profession (accountants and accounting technicians ) invested in public positions with final competence of the function.