MOSCOW, February 23 (RIA Novosti) – Russia will finalize the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by 2018, Russian Minister of Economic Development Andrei Belousov said.
“We have adopted a stringent program on transition to IFRS,” Belousov said at a business forum in Germany on Friday.
“Since 2012, IFRS standards are mandatory for all public interest entities in Russia, including banking and insurance companies” the minister said. “And we expect that the entire Russian business will make a full transition to new standards by 2018.”
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are designed as a common global language for business affairs so that company accounts are understandable and comparable across international boundaries.
Russia has been implementing a program to harmonize its national accounting standards with IFRS since 1998.
However, many companies continue to file financial reports according to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS)
Investors often complain that RAS reporting is not transparent and makes it hard to calculate the estimates on the return from investments.
