The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, has outlined various benefits of adopting the International Financial Reporting Standards to the country, urging companies in the country to adopt them.
During his keynote address at a special workshop organised by the Financial Reporting Council in Lagos for Small and Medium-scale Enterprises on the adoption of the IFRS, Aganga said there was need for Nigeria to move to the next level in accounting reporting standards.
According to the minister, the workshop will create awareness on the potential impact of the conversion and identify the regulatory synergies to be derived.
He said the forum would also help to communicate the temporary impact of the transition to the IFRS on business performance and financial position at the level of SMEs.
Aganga listed some of the benefits of adopting the global standards as “promotion of the compilation of meaningful data on the performance of various reporting entities at both public and private levels in Nigeria; thereby encouraging comparability and reliability of financial reporting in Nigeria.”
Others, he said, were “assurance of useful and meaningful decision on investment portfolio in Nigeria; attraction of Foreign Direct Investment; assurance of easier access to external capital for local and domestic companies; reduction of the cost of doing business across borders by eliminating the need for supplementary information from Nigerian companies; and facilitation of consolidation of financial information of the same company in different countries.”
He added that it would bring about easier regulation of financial information of reporting entities in Nigeria and enhanced knowledge of global financial reporting standards by tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
The minister said for the reasons of enhancement of knowledge of the IFRS by stakeholders in Nigeria, the Nigerian Universities Commission had been working together with the Financial Reporting Council towards aligning accounting curriculum to cover the teaching of IFRS.
