Felicity Karekwaivanane is the Registrar at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe. She leads the administration of the Vimbiso Scholarship Trust Fund.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) and the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) today welcomed the Monitoring Group’s recently released Paper: Strengthening the International Audit and Ethics Standard-Setting System, aimed at enhancing governance arrangements of the two standard-setting boards. 

The enhancements reflected in the Monitoring Group’s Paper will support the core mission of the two Boards to promulgate high quality international audit, assurance, related services and ethics standards for the accountancy profession, for worldwide application and developed in the public interest.

“The Monitoring Group’s conclusions highlight the importance of high-quality international standards, set by independent and technically expert bodies with effective oversight,” said IAASB Chairman Tom Seidenstein. “We support change that can advance our ability to deliver enhanced standards in the public interest.”  

“The task now at hand is to draw the most benefit from these changes,” said IESBA Chairman Dr. Stavros Thomadakis. “We are committed to collaborating with the Monitoring Group and others to achieve a smooth transition and effective implementation of the new arrangements.”

The Monitoring Group’s Paper encompasses items to be developed during a transition planning phase, and provides for a subsequent implementation period of approximately three years. This will allow for an orderly advancement of the Monitoring Group’s conclusions while avoiding disruption to delivery of IAASB’s and IESBA’s current Strategies and Work Plans.

For more about the International Auditing and Assurance Standard Board, visit the Board’s website at www.iaasb.org.

For more about the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants, visit the Board’s website at www.ethicsboard.org.

The IPSASB has published Exposure Draft 73, Covid-19: Deferral of Effective Dates, which proposes to delay the effective dates of recently published Standards and Amendments to IPSAS by one year to January 1, 2023. Responding to the global COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it has created, the purpose of this Exposure Draft is to provide stakeholders with additional implementation time.

The Standards and Amendments which are impacted include: 

• IPSAS 41, Financial Instruments;
• IPSAS 42, Social Benefits;
• Long-term Interests in Associates and Joint Ventures (Amendments to IPSAS 36) and Prepayment Features with Negative Compensation (Amendments to IPSAS 41);
• Collective and Individual Services (Amendments to IPSAS 19); and
• Improvement to IPSAS, 2019. 

The IPSASB welcomes comments on the Exposure Draft by August 15, 2020.

Objective

The objective of this workstream was to develop drafting principles and guidelines to address complexity, understandability, scalability and proportionality (CUSP) in developing International Standards on Auditing (ISAs).