Strengthening Financial Reporting Regimes and the Accountancy Profession and Practices in Selected Caribbean Countries

Abstract

The main objectives of this report are
 to: (a) provide a synthesized analysis of financial
 reporting and auditing standards and practices across the
 countries in which the Institute of Chartered Accountants of
 the Caribbean (ICAC) is active and (b) provide a basis for
 recommendations to ICAC and respective national institutes
 for a regional strategy to enhance the accounting profession
 and the accounting and auditing practices in the public and
 private sectors. This report’s focus on reforms and
 identification of areas and means to strengthen the
 accounting profession have at their root the conviction that
 systemic enhancements to the standards and practices of the
 profession can materially improve the lives of the region’s
 populace, particularly its less prosperous citizens, through
 greater transparency, strengthened economic growth and its
 attendant employment and tax revenue prospects, and greater
 access to financing for and formalization of the region’s
 dominant sector-micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises
 (MSMEs). The report finds that a constraint limiting both
 investment across the region, particularly to MSMEs that
 characterize the respective national economies, and the
 efficient use of public resources is the accounting and
 auditing practices and the financial reporting regimes that
 prevail in both the public and private sectors. This finding
 emerges from: (i) a review of Reports on the Observance of
 Standards and Codes for Accounting and Auditing (ROSC AA)
 conducted by the World Bank for Jamaica, Trinidad and
 Tobago, Suriname, and the countries of the Organisation of
 Eastern Caribbean States, and (ii) Bank missions to those
 countries updating the ROSC findings as well as missions to
 countries that have not yet had ROSC AA reviews (during
 which the Bank team met the national accountancy body,
 regulators of entities that fall within the financial
 reporting chain, supreme audit institutions, central banks,
 and so forth so as to secure information that would
 typically be found in formal ROSC AA reports).