The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) has released four exposure drafts on measurements for public discussion. We remind that “ED” in each case stands for “Exposure Draft”, ie the preliminary version of the standard:
- ED 76: update to Chapter 7 of “Conceptual Framework”. There are such in IPSASB by analogy with “Conceptual Framework for IFRS”. Chapter 7 is called “Measurements of Assets and Liabilities in Financial Statements”;
- ED 77 “Measurement”
- ED 78 “Property, Plant and Equipment”
- ED 79 “Non-Current Assets Held for Sale and Discontinued Operations”.
The decision to release all these documents in a single package was made by the developers in connection with the intention to demonstrate more clearly the general principles of measurement, which will be consistently applied to any standards.
The selected topics were a response to the principal remarks on the difficulties of a purely practical direction, which came earlier. As a result, IPSASB developers:
- proposed clearer hierarchy-based measurement principles that meet the Conceptual Framework and are consistently applied in all IPSAS standards;
- clarified the requirements for the recognition and measurement of complex in this sense infrastructure and inherited objects (within the standard on property, plant and equipment);
- introduced requirements for accounting for non-current assets held for sale and discontinued operations, where previously there was a huge gap.
As for the updates in the Conceptual Framework, they eliminate inconsistencies in the measurement principles by excluding unused measurement frameworks and emphasize those that are commonly used. Here, a clear hierarchy of measurement is introduced, which will help to apply the principles in practice and better combine the basic concepts with specific measurement requirements in individual IPSAS standards.
Public discussions of all four EDs will last until October 25.