Kudos For Our Accounting Profession
The World Bank has benchmarked how our accounting and auditing profession have adopted international standards. The report found that not only is South Africa up to world class standards but we have contributed positively to the development of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).
As many of you will know IFRS has become a widely used global standard and it is likely that financial statements for your business will either use IFRS or IFRS for SMEs.
In addition, the accounting profession has made significant transformation progress. Since 2002, the number of black chartered accountants has grown from 322 CAs to 2,811 by 2013, whilst coloured CAs have grown from 222 to 1,043 in the same period. This is mainly due to a joint venture bursary scheme founded by SAICA – the Thuthuka Bursary Fund. Thuthuka is a collaboration between, inter alia, SAICA, the Department of Higher Education and Training, universities and the auditing profession. So successful has this been that the accounting profession has not suffered the usual brain drain of other skilled professions.
Bursaries are given to students who have the ability to become a chartered accountant but do not have the funds to complete their studies. Many of the Thuthuka students outperform other students studying to be CAs.
Another indication of the success of this programme is that the World Economic Forum has rated South Africa as the best in auditing and reporting standards out of 144 countries for the past three years.
This is another indication that SAICA can work successfully with government (see SME research article above).
Provided by May and Company
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