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40% of companies haven’t complied with IFRS – Gwarzo

By BusinessNews Staff on February 20, 2015

The Acting Director-General, Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, has lamented the failure of some companies to fully migrate to the International Financial Reporting Standards.

A statement from the SEC quoted Gwarzo as expressing the concern when members of the Association of Reporting Accountants visited him in Abuja on Tuesday.

“Last year, almost 40 or more per cent of the companies had yet to migrate to IFRS. We are looking at running a training programme for them and we want to collaborate with you,” the acting SEC DG was quoted as saying.

Gwarzo, who explained that the commission was having some challenges with some of the companies migrating to IFRS, said it was prepared to collaborate with ARACM to ensure a smooth migration to the new reporting standards.

In the course of the visit, the statement said, the association had called on SEC to make it mandatory for accountants and auditors to join the association.

However, Gwarzo said the commission did not have the powers to force any group or individual to belong to trade groups.

“We do not have power to force people that they must belong to any trade group,” he said.

Nevertheless, he promised that SEC would do all it could to encourage more professionals to join trade groups.

The statement said Gwarzo added that going forward, the SEC would use firms that belong to a trade group as a way of encouraging more people to join the trade groups.

Gwazo was also said to have restated the desire of the commission for all the major disciplines in the capital market to have their associations, stressing that by allowing trade groups to handle issues or complaints before escalating the unresolved ones to the commission, the SEC would be able to focus more on discharging its responsibilities as the apex regulator of the capital market.

The Chairman of the Association, Ayodele Othihiwa, was quoted as saying that although reporting accountants had a role to play when new issues or transactions were being done, the auditors were more important in creating transparency because the financial statements that they sign were major sources of information to operators in the capital market.

According to him, following the global financial crisis, new challenges have emerged concerning the kind of reports that the auditors issue.

“You know our typical report looks at our responsibilities and then concludes by saying that we believe that the account gives a true and fair view,” he was quoted as saying.

He, therefore, called for collaboration with the SEC in the area of capacity building for the market

Nigeria had adopted the International Financial Reporting Standards in 2012, but several companies, especially insurance firms, had serious challenges migrating to the new standards.

[Punch]

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