The outgoing year was complicated as for the country so as for our profession. The introduction of two legislative drafts intended to reform Ukrainian audit totally as well as introduction of high profile Resolution 390 of the Government led to standing upon professional interests for the first time of independent audit in existence.
The offer to amend current legislation on audit activity became the most momentous event in 2015. Thus, the legislation “On audit of financial statements and audit” was published on the website of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine.
Another law “On audit activity” was drafted by the group of People’s deputies in the lead of Oleksandr Kirsh.
All-Ukrainian conference of auditors of Ukraine was organized in autumn of this year to discuss proposed legislative drafts by the Auditors' Chamber of Ukraine together with the Union of Auditors of Ukraine and professional organizations of accountants and auditors. The participants of the conference concurred in conclusion that both documents included updated norms but they are still incomplete and could not be approved in new proposed versions.
However, there is a critical need of national legislation on audit activity to comply with regulations of European association. Now there is a working party, which includes representatives of the World Bank, governmental authorities, people’s deputies as well as auditors with work experience. And the working party plans to present their legislative act on audit activity.
The Resolution “Certain issues of audit of business entities of the state economic sector” of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated 04.06.2015, № 390, which is contested in the court today, also caused much noise. It should be reminded that the Resolution approved the criterion under which the audit firms could join the auditing of financial statements of certain state-owned enterprises. Ukrainian audit firms mainly complained that the Government entitled “Big Four” companies by this document, which led to the monopolization of audit market of Ukraine. However, professional competence of the auditors, who works in our national audit firms, is highly competitive with knowledge of their “international” colleagues. Most of them have sufficient level of knowledge, experience and skills to provide services of the highest quality to all clients.
“Government policy should be oriented to competitive recovery of national auditors, quality of their work as well as maximum compliance with global leaders of the field. However, such discriminative initiatives are able to deepen crisis in Ukrainian audit. National interests should always be at the first place. We hope that New Year 2016 brings long-awaited changes in our country, in our profession and in our minds” - Oleksandr Boiko, “De Visu” Group President summarizes.
