IFRS as a determinant of the quality of financial reporting in the Republic of Serbia

Abstract

The development processes which shaped the today's world market and international financial institutions have caused the need for financial statements standardization and harmonization at the global level. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) plays a crucial role in this process in the Republic of Serbia. By adopting the IFRS IASB project, IAS included, as the national standards, the Republic of Serbia started to apply a new system of financial reporting defined by legal and professional accounting regulations. The main purpose of this research is to indicate the cause-and-effect relationship between financial regulations and financial reporting formation according to the standards and harmonization requirements at the global level. With the aforementioned as the starting point, the main aim of the research in this paper is to indicate whether the financial statements based on the IASB project in the Republic of Serbia may be compared to the financial statements in other countries. The research results show that the immediate and exclusive IFRS implementation in the Republic of Serbia has become the limitation factor for the informational value of financial statements. Also, research results show that in addition to the IAS/IFRS, American accounting principles and the EU Directive 34 represent the key segments of professional regulations contributing to a better accounting harmonization, as well as a higher quality of financial reporting. Most countries with their own national financial regulations, harmonize their accounting rules with the above mentioned regulations when it comes to the most important issues.