The international and Russian standards on auditing will become uniform. On December 11, 2013 National Organization for Financial Accounting and Reporting Standards Foundation arranged a press breakfast devoted to signing of the contract between the NOFA Foundation and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).
On December 11, 2013 the NOFA Foundation arranged a press breakfast devoted to signing of the contract between the NOFA Foundation and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) on the official translation into Russian of the International Standards on Auditing (ISAs).
As the Chairman of the National Accounting Standards Board (NASB) of the NOFA Foundation Askold Birin noted, contract signing is an important step towards harmonization of accounting environment and transition of the Russian business to the generally accepted world language of communication.
The International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) is a widely recognized code of norms and rules, including, ethical by which the auditor has to be guided in professional activity. Today in Russia ISAs have no official status. The applicable national standards on auditing which, though guided by ISAs, constantly are in a role of "catching up". Herewith ISAs represent much more complete and harmonious system of rules. Besides, certifying the official reporting of the companies under IFRSs, the auditor is often compelled to issue two Audit Reports – according to national and according to international standards of audit or to reflect two approaches in one Audit Report that is hypothetically entails different interpretations.
"We hope that the official translation of ISAs will be followed by their official recognition in Russia, - Askold Birin, Chairman of NASB of the NOFA Foundation notes. – In other words Russia will start applying ISAs and thus, will be in line with world innovations in the area of audit standards".
Signing of the contract is some kind of "the culmination of work of the Foundation" which throughout its 10-year history, acts as a platform for coordinating interests of both originators of the financial statements, and those who performs audit, and those who uses these financial statements, the director of the NOFA Foundation Irina Krasilnikova noted. According to her, the translation and ISAs acceptance in Russia can become one more incentive for integration processes in CIS. The meeting of Coordination Council on Accounting at the Executive committee of the CIS which took place in October 2012, focused on issue of unification of the translations of audit standards and accounting standards.
According to the contract with IFAC within the next 15 months the NOFA Foundation should translate into Russian more than 1500 pages of the text of the Handbook of international quality control, auditing, review, other assurance, and related services pronouncements. As the Vice-chairman of NASB of the NOFA Foundation Andrey Poselskiy told, work on translation of ISAs will be designed by the same principle, as translation of IFRSs which the NOFA Foundation have been carrying out since October 2012 according to the agreement signed with IASB. “It is very important that within this work both the translations of ISAs and IFRSs will be unified”, - the expert noted.
