The Directorate-General for State Accounting (DIGECOG) is an institution created on 27 July 2001 by Act No. 126-01, which is responsible for being the governing body for public accounting. Until then, Dominicans working as accountants had an informal preparation based on the practice that circumstances had brought them as a work exercise. As a result of international transformations, the second occurred. The accounting profession in the Dominican Republic is closely linked to the development of the sugar industry. The war of independence in Cuba and the German-French conflict in the early twentieth century led to an increase in sugar prices and stimulated investment in this sector. Cuban technicians and American investors came to the Dominican Republic and laid the groundwork for the construction of large mills. In 1944± during the Trujillo dictatorship, engineer Juan Paradsa Bonilla founded the Professional School of Accounting, which was later formalized by the then President of the Republic and renamed the Escuela Superior de Peritos Contadores.20 Jan 2017 From then on, Dominican public accounting was administered by the General Accounting Office. The National Treasury and the National Budget Office. Investors noted that there were no accounting professionals in the country who tracked sugar transactions and production costs and imported them from the United States, which is why North American accounting principles have been used in the Dominican Republic since that time. Following the intervention, and in order to facilitate its work of domination and recovery, the United States brought in technicians to organize the intervening government and to know the availability of each of the institutions, which was achieved with the accounts reports.
After the vacancy, the government of Horacio Vásquez (1924 – 1930) requested a loan of $10 million for public works. In order to approve this loan, the necessary mechanisms had to be in place in the country to control its use, condition the creditors, the administrative and financial organization of the Dominican State. To this end, the Dominican Economic Commission was established under the leadership of Charles Gate Dowes, known as the “Dowes Commission”, to lay the foundation for the country`s first public accounting, which is reflected in Law 950 of 26 May 1928. Law 633 also gave birth to the Escuela Superior de Peritos Contadores, which is the starting point for the official teaching of accounting in the Dominican Republic. The Graduate School of Chartered Accountants consisted of two academic cycles: the first cycle qualified the student with the level of a bachelor`s degree in commercial studies. The second cycle elevated him to the level of a chartered accountant. Later, by Law 4413 of March 24, 1956, the Faculty of Economics and Commerce was created at the University of Santo Domingo and the right to offer the academic second cycle, previously offered by the Higher School of Chartered Accountants, today Lic. Víctor Estrella Liz Secondary School of Business Studies. An important event for public accounting was the adoption, on August 9, 1954, of Law 3894, which created the “Auditor and Auditor General of the Republic”. Although this had the dual function of recording and controlling the funds received and used by the State, it was nevertheless a remarkable advance in public accounting.
The General Directorate of State Accounting (DIGECOG), an institution of the Ministry of Finance established by Law 126-01, is the governing body of State accounting, responsible for the publication of technical standards, guidelines and procedures©governing the processing, evaluation and disclosure of the law. Law 3894 was amended on 13 November 1970 by Law No. 54, so that the Comptroller and Auditor General of the Republic changed his name to Comptroller General of the Republic, which he retains to this day. Throughout the period under review, the Dominican Government`s accounting was simple, provided limited information and was almost always limited to reporting on revenues and disbursements received by the State through its various institutions.