Serbia – regional leader in the reform of financial reporting
Brussels, March 29 (Tanjug) – Serbia is the regional leader in the reform process of financial reporting, estimated the Minister of Finance Dusan Vujovic, who participated today in Brussels at a conference “Road to Europe” on the reform of the financial reporting.
Transparency of financial books in Serbia further leads to new investments and economic growth in the country. It was stressed at this event, which was organized by the Center for Financial Reporting (CFRR) and the World Bank.
Minister Vujovic conveyed Serbia’s experience in the area of financial reporting, where it is expected from our state, according to the World Bank’s evaluation, to be one of the leaders in the region.
“My message here is that Serbia is the leader in this field. This is a good sign for all of us, not only because we are making a progress in the adoption of international standards of financial reporting, but we are also moving into a new system of a higher level of responsibility and professionalism in the preparation, presentation and revision of those reports”, said Vujovic during the Conference in Brussels.
According to him, we are now transiting from a system where the accountants passively applied the law to a system where the accountants actively guarantee the validity of those reports with their signature.
Vujovic says that the accuracy and transparency of financial reporting is the best way to show the investors the representative picture of the situation in Serbia and to improve investment environment in the country.
“When the investors come up to cooperate with someone, they want to know that the financial records are reliable, and in line with the rules that everyone recognizes. There are no hidden figures or manipulation of numbers. We have the reports confirming the current market situation, the strength of the investors, the strength of Serbia, the strength of the investment space for all of the future investments and regional projects”, the minister explained.
It is alleged from the World Bank that Serbia and its Ministry of Finance launched a considerable project for the improvement of financial transparency in the country last year.
The project was helped by the World Bank and the Swiss Government, and it encompassed the training in the fields of education, accounting and audit as well as building the administrative capacity to monitor the transparency and accuracy of the financial information, which are available in Serbian business sector.
“Serbia has already made a great progress in this area and we expect it to be a leader in efforts of transformation with the aim of financial transparency”, said Dzzeret Decker, the Director of the World Bank’s Centre for the financial reporting reform.
Progress in this area includes the overall progress that Serbia is doing in the accession negotiations and harmonization of legislation with the EU standards.
Financial reporting is in the framework of Chapter 6 of the accession negotiations with the EU, which should be opened perhaps as early as in June and for which Serbia has already got passing marks from the European Commission.
In the Ministry of Finance, they stress that Serbia is a regional leader not only because of the harmonization of legislation in the field of financial transparency with EU regulations, but also because of the practical application of the results of these reforms that result in the intensification of investments.
“We are entering the domain into which we will have much more reliable and more accurate reporting which will form the basis for everything that we do with Europe, inter alia, for the application of Chapter 32. You cannot expect big investments and big investors who invest hundreds of millions and billions of euros without having 100 percent confidence into our financial reports”, concluded the Minister Vujovic.
link:
https://www.mfin.gov.rs/newsitem.php?id=10834&change_lang=en