Asia-Oceania Regional Forum on IFRSs
27 Oct 2005
On 24 October 2005, Australia and New Zealand co-hosted an Asia-Oceania Regional Forum on IFRSs in Sydney, Australia.
Participating jurisdictions were China, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and the two host countries. The delegates included senior representatives of accounting standard setting and oversight bodies, professional accounting bodies, central banks, and government officials. The goal of the forum is to enhance regional cooperation and coordination in implementing IFRSs. Among the issues discussed:
- the benefits of further dialogue in the Asia-Oceania region;
- the differences between adoption, convergence, and harmonisation with IFRSs and the benefits and disadvantages of each;
- the importance, and implications, of the IASB's Small and Medium-sized Entities project for the region. In this context it was noted that in some jurisdictions a very large number of small and medium entities are required to comply with IFRSs;
- the delays in implementing the standards arising from translation of the international standards into local languages and/or the incorporation of the international standards into domestic legal frameworks; this raised some issues regarding when the domestic systems and related financial reports can be regarded as 'IFRS compliant'.
- interaction between IFRS and prudential and tax frameworks.