Congratulations Ukraine! Starting gun fired on iXBRL reporting
Ukraine is gearing up for XBRL-based financial reporting for the first time in 2021. With a new, tailored taxonomy and data collection system in place, the country is looking forward to improved reporting and structured financial data in a single electronic format that will be comparable and compatible with EU and international standards.
The reform, supported by the EU since 2015, is currently supported through the EU-FAAR Project on ‘Implementation of EU Practices for Accounting, Financial Reporting and Audit in Ukraine’. The project is helping the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine (MoF), the National Bank of Ukraine, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC) and the Audit Public Oversight Body (APOB) to standardise reporting. The project has created Ukraine-specific extensions to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) taxonomy, which are currently being published. With the project’s help, the Head of Accounting and Audit at the MoF, Ludmila Gaponenko, has recently joined the IFRS Foundation’s IFRS Taxonomy Consultative Group (ITCG). The NSSMC has a new submission portal, the Financial Reporting System (FRS), which will collect data in iXBRL format.
It’s no half measures for Ukraine: entities across the financial industry, including banks, insurers, and all publicly listed companies, will be using XBRL for quarterly and annual statutory reporting from 2021 – replacing a variety of different reporting methods. Users are now registering on the FRS and preparing to submit their first reports. One interesting feature of the new reporting format in terms of quality assurance is that it will include an audit statement as part of the iXBRL document, requiring electronic signatures from both issuer and audit partner prior to submission.
For both the EU and Ukraine, the project promises big benefits in terms of improved market transparency, helping Ukraine meet European disclosure standards and facilitating trade and collaboration with the EU. Since both are based on the IFRS XBRL taxonomy, the new standard is interoperable with the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF).
“We’ve found a real thirst for knowledge. There has been great attendance at trainings and webinars, and users have dug in deep with searching questions,” says Stuart Rowan, EU-FAAR Taxonomy Development Expert. “Regulators have been raring to go on data standardisation, and the coordination by the project enabled it to get off the ground. For them it will be a huge improvement in terms of alignment with the EU, as well as shared data compatibility and access.”
We at XBRL International are always delighted to welcome a new country to the digital reporting fold, and we look forward to more news from Ukraine as the standard rolls out. Вітаємо!
