Publication: Strengthening Financial Reporting Regimes and the Accountancy Profession and Practices in Selected Caribbean Countries
Date
2015-06-26
ISSN
Published
2015-06-26
Author(s)
World Bank Group
Abstract
The main objectives of this report are
to: (a) provide a synthesized analysis of financial
reporting and auditing standards and practices across the
countries in which the Institute of Chartered Accountants of
the Caribbean (ICAC) is active and (b) provide a basis for
recommendations to ICAC and respective national institutes
for a regional strategy to enhance the accounting profession
and the accounting and auditing practices in the public and
private sectors. This report’s focus on reforms and
identification of areas and means to strengthen the
accounting profession have at their root the conviction that
systemic enhancements to the standards and practices of the
profession can materially improve the lives of the region’s
populace, particularly its less prosperous citizens, through
greater transparency, strengthened economic growth and its
attendant employment and tax revenue prospects, and greater
access to financing for and formalization of the region’s
dominant sector-micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises
(MSMEs). The report finds that a constraint limiting both
investment across the region, particularly to MSMEs that
characterize the respective national economies, and the
efficient use of public resources is the accounting and
auditing practices and the financial reporting regimes that
prevail in both the public and private sectors. This finding
emerges from: (i) a review of Reports on the Observance of
Standards and Codes for Accounting and Auditing (ROSC AA)
conducted by the World Bank for Jamaica, Trinidad and
Tobago, Suriname, and the countries of the Organisation of
Eastern Caribbean States, and (ii) Bank missions to those
countries updating the ROSC findings as well as missions to
countries that have not yet had ROSC AA reviews (during
which the Bank team met the national accountancy body,
regulators of entities that fall within the financial
reporting chain, supreme audit institutions, central banks,
and so forth so as to secure information that would
typically be found in formal ROSC AA reports).
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank Group. 2015. Strengthening Financial Reporting Regimes and the Accountancy Profession and Practices in Selected Caribbean Countries. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22469 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”