The “Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority” SE (USPA) is one of the first state enterprises to have finalized the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). On September 27th, 2019, Baker Tilly Ukraine LLC, which is an independent member of the Baker Tilly international network, has completed its audit and prepared an independent auditor report on the USPA’s preliminary financial statements for 2018, USPA says in a press release.
“The switch to international financial reporting standards is a necessary step for the enterprises the development strategies of which provide for maximum transparency and fruitful cooperation with foreign investors and financial institutions. We have been repeatedly discussing this issue with the USPA Supervisory Board members and will provide them with the audit report. In addition, the transition to international standards is a mandatory requirement of the current legislation within the framework of bringing it into line with the EU directives. I am very much pleased that USPA has become one of the first state enterprises of public interest which managed to switch to international reporting standards,” — Mykola Poltoratsky, Deputy CEO for Economics at USPA said.
He also added that the transition to IFRS makes USPA more open and understandable to global businesses which used to operate under international standards. Accordingly, the opportunities of the state enterprise to attract financing for the implementation of large investment projects will be greatly expanded.
A number of milestones have been included in the road map for the USPA transition to IFRS. First, the differences between the National Accounting Regulations (Standards) and IFRS were detected. Second, the USPA accounting policy was developed. The revaluation of property, plant and equipment made it possible to generate IFRS-based financial statements at fair value as for the date of transition to IFRS. Transformation of the data as for the comparative (preliminary) period in order to prepare the first financial statements under international standards was accompanied by the training of the USPA staff with the involvement of the PwC practitioners, which is listed among the four leading audit companies worldwide.
The final step in the integrated IFRS transition project was the audit of the USPA’s preliminary financial statements for 2018 prepared under IFRS. According to the conclusion of the audit company Baker Tilly Ukraine LLC, the preliminary financial statements of USPA for 2018 as for all material respects have been prepared in compliance with IFRS.
USPA recently announced in the ProZorro electronic procurement system a tender to select a company to perform an independent audit of its financial statements for 2019–2021. As the Head of USPA Raivis Veckagans said earlier, the transparency of the annual financial statements with the respective independent auditor opinion is required by the current legislation and constitutes another step towards further corporatization of USPA.