21 June 2002
In her keynote speech at the closing session of the CIPFA conference in Brighton on June 13, she urged the institute to work more closely with her department in the fight against world poverty.
Short said that she would not risk putting more UK taxpayers' money into the international aid system unless she could be sure that developing countries' financial management was robust and that they had 'strengthened their focus' on accounting practices to stamp out corruption.
Public sector accountants, she argued, had an important advisory role to play, with organisations such as CIPFA sharing best practice through the International Federation of Accountants (Ifac).
CIPFA already has a prominent role in Ifac, which works closely with the World Bank and the IMF to tackle financial problems in the developing world. The institute advises Ifac's public sector committee through its representative, Mike Hawthorn.
'We're already working together through Ifac to develop common accounting practices across developing countries. I hope you might want to have discussions with this department on how to take this forward,' Short told delegates.
CIPFA chief executive Steve Freer later responded: 'The secretary of state has thrown down the gauntlet to us all. The short-term challenge is to help develop systems to deliver improved financial management and transparent accounting. The medium-term challenge is to develop people, growing the local skills and knowledge which are key to sustainability. CIPFA can play an important role at both levels.'
Short said that while some developing countries had misused aid in the past, there had been a significant shift in recent years towards democracy and transparency at political and financial levels.
Moving away from the subject of aid, she also argued that robust accounting systems could create economic growth across the developing world by reassuring potential investors that governments and businesses would not misuse their money.
'Accountants are at the centre of it. We're on course to meet our poverty [eradication] targets but it's a matter of political will and capacity. Until now, no single generation in human history has had the ability to eliminate [poverty], but to achieve this we need the investment.'
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