DEMİRBAŞ, Tolga Uludag University - Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences - Public Finance Department, Turkey , EROĞLU, Erdal Uludag University - Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences - Public Finance Department, Turkey

The Evaluation of Annual Municipal Reports in terms of Discharging Accountability: The Case of Turkey

25797

Public Financial Management and Control Law, which is accepted to be the constitution of public fiscal management in Turkey, has brought about many innovations such as strategic plan, performance-based budget and accrual based accounting so that public resources can be used more efficiently. The law has also stipulated that public institutions account for the use of resources to relevant authorities. As in the world, the most comprehensive accountability tool in Turkey is annual reports. The objective of this study is to find out to what extent the municipalities, which are now using more resources than in the past, can account by means of their annual reports. To reach this goal, the annual reports prepared by 50 municipalities for the fiscal year 2014 have been put to content analysis considering the accountability criteria that have already been set. The research has revealed that the municipalities concerned are weak in terms of accessibility, understandability, timeliness, full disclosure, accuracy and neutrality and, thus, they do not sufficiently account for their use of resources

575

Annual reports , Accountability , Municipalities , Performance , based Budgeting

Journal Of Management an‎d Economics

598