Financial Reporting in Public Sector: Factors That Affect the Timeliness of Financial Statements at the First-Grade Local Administration Organizations (Municipalities) in Greece

Aikaterini Koutsomyti
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Aikaterini Koutsomyti: University of Western Macedonia

Chapter Chapter 29 in Advances in Applied Microeconomics, 2025, pp 531-553 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In the context of the accounting reform of the Greek public sector, specific time limits have been established by law within which public sector entities must publish their financial reports. However, from the analysis of secondary data obtained online for the years 2011–2021, it emerges that there is a significant deficit in fiscal discipline among the first-grade local administration organizations (municipalities), as there are high rates of non-compliance with the already legislated rules. Specifically, 57.83% of the country’s municipalities (with a reference year of 2021) have not published their financial statements on time, with the highest rates observed in the municipalities of the island regions, in small municipalities (population of 3501–20,000 inhabitants), in municipalities with a small budget (between 10,000,001 and 30,000,000 euros), and in municipalities without an established Internal Control Unit (ICU) in their organization. Based on the available data, statistical analysis (correlation and linear regression analysis) was conducted, from which it emerged that there is a negative, statistically significant correlation between the dependent variable “delay in the publication of financial statements (in years)” and the independent variables of population, budget size, and the number of posts in the internal control unit (ICU) at the organization chart, while there is a negative but not statistically significant relationship with the variable of the number of occupied posts in the ICU. Also, the variable referring to the specific geomorphological and economic characteristics of the municipalities (categorization according to Article 2a of Law 3852/10), as well as the existence of an ICU in the municipality’s organization chart, create categories of municipalities where the dependent variable has a different distribution. Furthermore, the model of the above independent variables can explain the 12.2% of the variations in the dependent variable.

Keywords: Financial reporting; Public sector; Timeliness; Quality of financial statements; Local administration organizations; Accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-76654-1_29

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