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IASC Foundation’s IFRS Conference - 25-26 June 2008
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Last week the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) Foundation held an IFRS Conference in Amsterdam, led and attended by IASB chairman David Tweedie, several IASB Board members and several IASB staff. There is a current impetus to complete the 9 projects that are part of the Memorandum of Understanding with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board by 2011 in order to have a stable platform for new countries (Canada, Japan, Korea, Israel and India) adopting IFRS and to facilitate any decisions coming out of the US regarding moving to IFRS or allowing IFRS for domestic registrants. Topics featured in the conference included:

  • IASB progress and plans 
  • Critical analysis of IFRS and how they are being applied (by analysts) 
  • Update on the Constitution Review by the Chairman of the Trustees, Gerrit Zalm 
  • Update of the financial instruments papers – reducing complexity in reporting financial instruments, derecognition and financial instruments with characteristics of equity 
  • Several break out sessions featuring in more detail the following current projects – conceptual framework, post-employment benefits, revenue recognition, consolidation and financial statement presentation
In addition several special interest sessions were held – one of significant interest for Australia, being on Extractive Industries. Currently around the world accounting is not consistent for extractive industries since IFRS 6 Exploration for and Evaluation of Mineral Resources generally allows entities to continue to apply their local GAAP accounting policies in accounting for exploration and evaluation activities. Glenn Brady, a senior project manager at the Australian Accounting Standards Board and part of the IASB Extractive Activities Project Team, led the discussion on this topic in Amsterdam. The topic is currently a research project which takes a ‘fresh look’ at how to account for oil and gas and mineral reserves/resources since the current IFRS 6 is only an interim solution and existing IFRS do not adequately address the unique features of these industries. The research team is international and is exploring different models that could be applied to the recognition, measurement and disclosure of oil and gas and mineral reserve and resource assets. It is expected that a discussion paper will be issued by the end of 2008 on this topic. An updated version of the project summary for the extractives project should be available on the IASB website next week. 
 
This article was taken from ANT24/2008 and is current up to 4 July 2008