India in Favor of IFRS Adoption
Experts of accounting stated that India is all set to adopt International Financial Reporting Standard, even though the United States is not willing to support, commit to and adopt IFRS. At present there are a number of differences between IFRS and U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, including the way accounting procedures are being carried out in areas like insurance, financial instrument losses and leasing.
Even the staff report that was issued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which was released recently, did not contain any recommended plan of action for the Securities and Exchange Commission.
However, even though there are differences in the accounting standards, Indian accounting professionals and experts shared that adoption and convergence with IFRS will be beneficial for India.
Jaydeep Shah, CA Institute’s president has stated that India will not follow the United States as far as adoption of IFRS is concerned. Shah shared that he is looking forward to convergence with IFRS as and when the ‘Companies Bill’ in India comes into effect. It must be noted that India itself has been working in the direction of creating its very own accounting principles and standards-Ind-AS which seeks IFRS convergence.
At the beginning of the year 2010, the corporate affairs ministry had issued a number of press reports on India’s IFRS adoption roadmap and plan for convergence and had specified that the convergence would take place on 1st of April in the year 2011 and selected companies in India by 2014. However, the date by when Ind-AS will be implemented, has not yet been finalized.
At present, India, Japan as well as United Stated are the only three primary countries that are yet to adopt IFRS. On the other hand, countries like Russia, Brazil and Canada have already adopted IFRS in the year 2011.
Apart from these leading economies, even insurers across the global are in favor of IFRS. A recent survey conducted for Deloitte by Economic Intelligence Unit had revealed that insurers feel that IFRS will improve the transparency and consistency of financial reporting. In fact, they want both IASB and FASB to agree with each other as well.