The accountancy firms Andersen, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young International, Grant Thornton, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers have just published a survey of 62 countries national access by mates – benchmarked against IAS: GAAP 2000 publication: GAAP 2000 – A Survey of National Accounting Rules.
This publication summarizes the main differences between national accounting rules in the 62 countries of Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Australia. The Russian Federation and Ukraine are two of these countries, whose national accounting rules are included in this survey/ The countries taking part in the survey represent some 95% of the world’s GNP.
The national accounting rules that are mandatory as at December 2001 are compared with the provisions of IAS with a focus consolidated financial statements of listed companies. The survey looks at 80 key accounting and disclosure issues. As a result of the survey some instances have been detected, where individual country’s rules would not allow or would not require the IAS treatment under IAS
As it is known, over recent years there is a distinctive tendency towards harmonization of national accounting rules all over the world. However, the survey has identified that national rules still vary substantially from country to country. Almost all national systems allow certain differences from IAS. This-survey demonstrates that significant work should be done before financial results presented under national accounting rules can be directly compared between one country and another.
The survey and its publication is a very important step in the worldwide process of harmonization of national accounting rules. On the basis of the survey further work on developing national accounting systems, including the Russian Federation can be organized.
ICAR’s readers may find this publication useful and should direct any questions about it to the following experts:
- Mescheryakov Gennady, Andersen, Partner, tel. +7 (095) 755 9700,
- Howell Matthew, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Partner, tel. +7 (095) 933 7300,
- Ischuk Segrei, Ernst & Young International, Partner, tel. +7 (095) 705 9292,
- Lapov Valery, Grant Thornton, Partner, tel. +7 (095) 290 2886,
- Munnings Roger, KPMG, Partner, tel. +7 (095) 937 4477,
- Schneidman Leonid, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Partner, project coordinator for Russia, tel. +7 (095) 967 6000.