The Nigeria Accounting Standards Board (NASB) has said that the efforts at improving reliability of the financial reports produced in the country would yield better result if full convergence with international financial reporting standards is attained.
Executive Secretary of (NASB) Mr Godson Nnadi explained that the governing council of the boar had approved the inauguration of the roadmap committee on the adoption of (IFRS) in Nigeria in order to accelerate the attainment of full convergence which is aimed at accomplishing high result in financial reporting.
According to him, the anticipated achievement of this committee would not only enhance transparency and disclosure in financial report but would also bring Nigeria in line with the current global financial reporting and corporate governance and also stave off the prospect of isolation.
(NASB) chairman, Mr, Michaeal Popoola, who inaugurated the committee in his speech said financial reporting foster informed and efficient allocation of capital based on principles of transparency, consistency and comparability, as well as the score card that rational investors rely on, to make economic decision, and attract huge international capital flows.
He enumerated the responsibilities of the committee to include: identifying implementation challenges and steps to address them during the transition, determining if HRS for Nigeria should come as a quick fix or major overhaul, what effect would adoption of HRS have on private companies, what should be our national response to international accounting standards that are less rigorous to some peculiar accounting problems arising from our jurisdiction.
To ascertain whether Nigeria should seek to legislate that IASB be rated as a Nigerian GAAP setting body or define the authority of IASB’s pronouncements together, what impact the adoption of IFRS have on regulatory/statutory and tax reporting, how do we handle enforcements legal and technical issues and what would be the future role of the NASB, are also among their task.
The chairman, of the committee, Mr. Jim Obazee, in his acceptance speech pledged that diligence and patriotism should be the guiding spirit of the committee and he assured the board that the committee would not only come up with a convergence process that would protect the vulnerable but also would submit their report on schedule.
Mr. Abel Atalor, the chairman of the committee for development of accounting standard for electricity activities, which was also inaugurated the same day commended the initiative of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory, Commission (NERC) in collaboration with NASB in developing accounting standard for electricity activities in the country as he preserves his acceptance speech.
Still speaking, he said that uniform accounting standard in the electricity sector would provide an accurate means of reporting cost and expenses which are required for tariff determination, a uniform means valuing assets within the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI): it will allow fair comparison of performance of the regulated entities, and confidence to foreign investors interested in the NESI.