Question

National Accounting system should not be used as a planning tool for Less Developed Countries. Explain using supportive research and reference to a Caribbean country.

Answer 1

The role of national accounting should therefore be limited to the provision of a general framework and factual support for public sector planning activities. In practice the United Nations system has been found far too complicated and ambitious, not sufficiently development planning oriented, and not suitable to the limited statistical resources available in the developing countries.

The paper recommends the publication of several detailed “case studies” in national accounting, hoping that those studies might help to identify types of accounting systems appropriate to different existing constellations. In the meantime a drastic scaling down of the United Nations system should be undertaken; we should try to equate demand and supply of relevant information.

In the final part, the paper considers planning requirements (timetable and flexibility, information required for a general assessment of the economy, crucial role of the publicsector, relative precision), statistical requirements (resources, data available, priorities, international reporting) and decision‐makers’requirements (compactness, simplicity, background information, wishes of external aid donors) and recommends, as an interim measure, a simplified system of national accounts consisting of eight main tables