“…To what extent such transparency and accountability can be restored through the adoption of international public sector accounting standards is a key question (Grossi et al, 2023;Van Helden et al, 2021;Polzer et al, 2019Polzer et al, , 2022. Whilst a few studies (Tawiah, 2023;Tawiah and Soobaroyen, 2022), as well as the reports published by international organisations and the accounting profession (Khan and Mayes, 2009;ACCA, 2017), outline several benefits that emerging economies can derive from IPSAS-based reporting, a paper by Polzer et al (2023) (in this special issue) has charted the different cultural, structural and economic constraints in the implementation process. However, with the evolving post-COVID-19 thinking and the different roles being assigned to public sector accounting (for instance, addressing the issues of social significance such as resilience building, facilitating coproduction and hybridity, mitigating climate risks and promoting grass-roots level engagement, empowerment and digitalisation), further research is required to delineate what role (if any) IPSASs could play in widening both the scope and role of public sector accounting in the new era.…”