UN Launches New Accounting Development Tool

Over 300 global accounting experts are set to meet in Qatar next week for a new UN accounting development initiative.

The initiative aims to both highlight the critical role a strong accounting infrastructure can play in helping developing countries grow and address the woeful lack of even basic accounting infrastructures prevalent in some emerging economies.

Organised by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), it will use the Doha event on 22 April to promote its new accounting development toolkit - designed to help developing countries build their accounting infrastructure.

Already successfully trialled in a series of pilot studies in Brazil, China, Croatia, Russia, South Africa and Vietnam, the toolkit was developed by UNCTAD’s Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR). Based on international benchmarks and good national practices, it covers financial and non-financial aspects of corporate reporting: financial accounting for large and small enterprises, as well as reporting on environmental issues, corporate social responsibility, and corporate governance.

Its developers say the toolkit empowers policy makers to ‘better navigate the complex interconnected network of institutions, regulations, and human resources that make up a country’s accounting infrastructure’.

Tatiana Krylova of UNCTAD, said: ‘The accounting development toolkit is designed to address the dynamic evolving world of accounting practices and is the subject of continual review and improvement by the international experts of the ISAR working group.’

A group of more than 300 ISAR experts from over 100 countries developed the toolkit over a two year period, involving annual meetings in Geneva, special consultative group meetings and a series of national roundtables held around the world.

Further information on the toolkit is available at UNCTAD or by e-mail isar@unctad.org.