First off, it's not easy understanding accrual. Somehow I did and I'm not an accountant, so there is hope.
Where I come from on this is that when you approve a capital expenditure in the current year—let's say the government is going to build a new building for $500 million—you appropriate only the funds that are required in the course of a year. Basically once you approve the funds for year one, you're stuck for year three, four, or whatever length of time it takes to build that building.
On that basis you're moving more to an accrual basis of accounting because you've accepted that the capital costs of this over a period of time are going to have to be met.
This is maybe more from a budget point of view, but when we were on a cash basis of accounting I saw too many departments meeting their restraint targets by cutting capital because it was on a cash basis. Once it goes on an accrual basis, it's treated exactly the same way as any other program.