Accra, Oct. 25, GNA - The Vice President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (Ghana), Professor Ato Ghartey on Tuesday urged policy framers to stretch social policies to cater for unemployment benefits as well as people with disabilities.

He noted that elsewhere, social policies were made to benefit even the minority groupings and the disadvantaged saying this lessened the burden on such individuals and made their lives more meaningful.

Speaking at a day's workshop on the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in Ghana, subtitled: "Recent Developments and Impact of Financial Reporting and Governance" in Accra, Prof Ghartey said in Ghana the social policy only took care of pensions ignoring unemployment benefit and the physically challenged.

The workshop organized by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana, aims among other things to enhance the awareness, understanding the scope and value of good public sector accounting and auditing standards in financial reporting and good governance.

It would also seek to guide and assist in the management and containment of the wide range of issues involved in the development, adoption and implementation of accounting standards.

Prof. Ghartey observed that the problems of financial accountability in developing countries and within the West Africa Sub-Region had not changed in the past 40 years.

He identified the hitches as inadequate structures, institutions and systems, weak coordination mechanisms, insufficient capacity and fragmentation of the change process of responsibilities. Prof. Ghartey noted that for a very long time no measurement framework had been fashioned to determine the impact of accountancy and auditing standards on the economy.

He said unlike other professions, there were no indicators to measure the performances of accountants to determine their contributions to national development.

At the national level the input of the accountant is not felt when the economy is making giant strides but their names only come to the fore in light of mismanagement and misappropriation of resources. Prof. Ghartey underscored the need to improve upon the old standards of financial accounting reporting and to adopt new models to make them fall in line with modern trends.

He noted that the institute would work out measures to ensure that the impact of the accountant was realized at all times.

"We will also constantly liaise with the international accounting standards institutions to exchange ideas and experiences to enhance our local systems," he said.