Cambodia Plans XBRL Implementation
Recently, there has been a research conducted by an official of the National Bank of Cambodia on a comprehensive plan for reform of its off site surveillance and monetary policy data collection functions that will see that central bank shift to utilise XBRL for data collection from banks and other deposit taking institutions over the next three and a half years.
In a presentation at the Eurofiling week in Frankfurt recently, NBC’s official Virak Khem from the NBC described the challenges which that institution faces, including an environment in which significantly more time is spent compiling data than in analysing it, and where validation errors can impair that analysis unless corrected. The research has simplified the journey that industry and the regulator will need to take by introducing a national standard chart of accounts for financial institutions, which should simplify taxonomy development, simplify the preparation of reports by reporting institutions, and enhance analysis over time.
A number of important points were made in the presentation, including the problems that emerging economies such as Cambodia face in resourcing a project of this nature, and the strain that project teams face, given the relative complexity of managing and maintaining taxonomies. Notwithstanding the challenges, the research is of the view that the benefits are sufficiently significant as to green light the initiative.
The Central Bank has worked closely with both Bank Indonesia, and the SNAI, the Shanghai National Accounting Institute which maintains an XBRL training program for industry in China.
From XBRL International’s perspective, this very useful study underpins the need to continue to work on simplification of the standard, it demonstrates the need to work towards better mechanisms for sharing and reusing taxonomy elements, and demonstrates the urgent need to accelerate the preparation of high quality guidance material. Although the consortium is working hard in many areas, the organisation relies on its membership for the necessary combination of financial and volunteer resources to meet the demands of XBRL’s users. We strongly encourage regulators and government agencies to join XBRL International to assist with these kinds of efforts. Read the presentation here.
