Brazilian states and municipalities are improving the quality of statistics sent to the National Treasury. According to the 2021 Accounting and Fiscal Information Quality Ranking, released today (27) by the Ministry of Economy, nine state governments and 365 city halls obtained an A grade last year, against three states and 191 municipalities in 2020.
The states that obtained an A grade in 2021 were Amazonas, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Pernambuco, Santa Catarina and Tocantins. The lowest grades were obtained by Roraima, with D, and Amapá, with C. The other 16 Federation Units obtained a B grade.
In a note, the National Treasury highlighted that the quality of the information provided improved “sensibly” between 2020 and 2021 and reported that the effort stems from the articulation between the federal government and local entities. “The improvement observed between 2020 and 2021 reflects the efforts of entities to adapt procedures and reconcile values that had inconsistencies in previous years”, he highlighted.
Regarding the municipalities, the National Treasury assesses that performance has also improved significantly. According to the agency, there was a migration from grades C, D and E to grades A and B. According to the agency, municipalities with maximum grades are better distributed among the states, unlike in previous years.
In addition to the 365 municipalities with an A grade in 2021, 1,750 received a B grade (against 1,412 in 2020). The other grades registered a decrease: 1,684 with a C grade (against 1,734 in 2020), 1,065 with a D grade (against 1,173 in the previous year) and 704 with an E grade (against 1,058 two years ago).
Criteria
To assess the quality of information provided by local governments, the Treasury evaluated four criteria. The first was information management (state or municipality behavior in sending and maintaining information). The second was the adequacy of accounting information to the Accounting Manual Applied to the Public Sector.
The adequacy of fiscal statistics to the rules of the Fiscal Statements Manual constituted the third criterion. The last criterion resulted from the equality of values between the accounting and tax statements. Both types of statistics should show the same results.
