The importance and usefulness of financial reporting of municipalities: a case study of municipalities in Mauritius

Abstract

There is already a body of literature on local government management and control, financial accounting and reporting in (Coombs et al., 1999). Most of these researchers have addressed the issue of the usefulness of financial reporting by municipalities in the context of large countries such as Malaysia or developed economies such as Australia, United States and United Kingdom (Coombs et al., 1999; Alijarde, 1997; Robbins, 1984). However, there is hardly any empirical evidence on the usefulness of financial reporting by municipalities from small island economies, such as Mauritius. Therefore, this paper fills that gap and attempts to analyse the issues using the information on municipalities in Mauritius. It focuses on the importance and usefulness of financial reports to the taxpayers including employees of the municipalities as users of the financial information. For this purpose, a survey was carried out on a sample of 300 taxpayers including employees and the general finding is that 99% of the taxpayers are interested to know how the municipalities use the tax collected from them. The findings of this study are consistent with the findings of Coombs et al. (1999) and Alijarde (1997). The study also reveals that the taxpayers are interested in other information such as a 'statement of tax collected and how utilised' by municipalities.