Af433

AF433 – ADVANCED STUDIES IN FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING

Faculty of Business and Economics

School of Accounting & Finance

The University of the South Pacific

Course Coordinator

Professor Michael White

Group Project, Trimester 1, 2012

The International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium Entities

Introduction:

SME’s are entities that do not have public accountability and publish general purpose financial statements for external users including owners who are not involved in managing the business, existing the potential creditors and credit rating agencies.

The IFRS for SME’s is intended to be used by small and medium sized entities. It was issued on 9th July 2009 and International Accounting Standards Board set no specific date of adoption, but encouraged immediate implementation. The Fiji Institute of Accountants requires implementation to begin after 1st January 2011.

A) The Scope of the Project

The scope of the group project is as follows:

1. To find out whether it is feasible or desirable for Fiji to maintain its deadline of 1st January 2011 for adoption of the Standard.

2. To make an assessment on whether to defer the adoption of the IFRS standard for SME’’s indefinitely.

3. To find out alternative means of regulating SMEs’ instead of IFRS for SME’s.

B) The Way in which we will go about the project:

Based on the IFRS definition of Small Medium Enterprises, the group will identify at least four business organizations that fall in this category to anaylse their current financial reporting practices. These organizations will be approached to get their views and reactions towards adoption of IFRS for SME’s. Where possible their financial reports will be obtained to understand and gauge the rationale for preparing the reports the way they have been prepared. Given the time constraints it may not be possible to cover a wide number of organizations so the information gathering exercise will be supported by questionnaires...