Bringing standards to account

June 28, 2011 | 11:00

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Global experts are committed to help local auditing industry upgrade its current standards system with frequent issues on new International Standards on Auditing’s (ISAs) content, building process as well as the other nations’ experience in apply those standards cleared up by experts from International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) – the body building and issuing ISAs.

The conference on June 28 and 29, held by Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants (VACPA) and sponsored by World Bank, was attended and discussed also by representatives from Ministry of Finance (MoF) and local auditing firms.

ISAs has been applied in Vietnam since 2006. However, the professional standards were greatly improved in 2009 and newly applied in Great Britain since 2010’s beginning. The new standards, or ISAs 2009, are now studied by Vietnam for applying in the nation’s auditing industry.

“Some two-thirds the [applying new ISAs] process had been finished,” said Bui Van Mai, general secretary for VACPA. Namely, 19 out of totaling 36 standards had been drafted and submitted to the MoF for approval, while 13 are being finished in December and being submitted in April next year.

The MoF planned to issue the entire new standards on July 1, next year at the latest, Mai said.

ISAs 2009, with 20 standards were completely replaced and 16 were restructured, accompanied with new sub-regulations, were greatly improved as compared with the old one, according to Mai.

“That great changes really bring a huge volume of work to do,” said Mai.

However, the bigger challenge was the nation’s auditing environment, he indicated. In fact, local enterprises and investors are largely believed as needing deeper knowledge on auditing for more efficiency in using auditing reports.

“The challenge is changing Vietnam’s current auditing standards environment into international environment,” said Katharine E Bagshaw, technical management for IAASB.

By Hai Linh

vir.com.vn

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