Tighten to the standard

Russia switches to international financial reporting standards. This is done to attract investors to the created and actively promoted international financial center in Moscow. However, in order to attract investors, you also need to not frighten them to Russian "justice".

To create an international financial center (MFC), it is necessary to implement international financial reporting standards in the optimal time, President Dmitry Medvedev said.

At a meeting of the MFC, he noted that the implementation of this idea directly depends on the solution of two problems. “The first task concerns the financial architecture of the MFC. In Russia, there should be a center where all the main types of financial instruments are represented. It is necessary to implement what we tried to implement in recent years, namely: international financial reporting standards for issuers and regulatory and tax authorities, ”Medvedev said.

According to him, this will allow Russia to better participate in the formation of the global financial system and will lead to greater openness and predictability of the economy, and will also improve "our far from brilliant investment climate."

The improvement of Moscow infrastructure is also promised. “Our task is to bring Moscow to the level of leading financial capitals. There are known problems here. Naturally, the criteria and standards that are adopted in the world will be used, ”the president hopes. “We cannot just say that Moscow itself is attractive, a good city where it is good to live, there are many opportunities, and nothing to do in order to realize it in real life.” Therefore, in Moscow you need to quickly solve transport problems and establish public security.

If it is already engaged in transport and other problems - as it is able - the metropolitan government, the topic of transition to international financial reporting standards

Mandatory for Russian companies today are Russian accounting standards (RAS) - a set of norms of the Federal Legislation of Russia and the provisions of accounting (PBU) issued by the Ministry of Finance, which regulate the rules of accounting. They are used along with IFRS and US GAAP. RASs do not apply to non -banking commercial organizations.

The problem of RAS is that for holding companies (which are not among large and medium -sized businesses), consolidated reporting is not provided. That is: you can see the activities of each enterprise individually and evaluate the effectiveness, but it is extremely difficult to assess the effectiveness of the holding as a whole.

With this approach, tax authorities can work with RAS, but it is difficult for investors to do this.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Alexei Kudrin, said at a meeting with the president that this month Russia has a chance to conclude an agreement with the IFRS Foundation and "thereby getting standards in our zone." As he stated at today's meeting with the President of the Russian Federation to create an international financial center, in accordance with the agreement of copyright, the standard applied officially in the country will belong to the Russian Federation.

The Ministry of Finance does not exclude that in the list of instructions that will be given following the results of the meeting, it will be proposed that the government by the end of the year has passed the entire period of adaptation of the IFRS in the Russian Federation. “If this happens before January 1, then the next year is the first year in which IFRS standards will be applied to evaluate consolidated companies, groups of the Russian Federation, that is, in 2013 to 2012,” Kudrin said.

Yesterday it became known that the government approved the procedure for the transfer of companies to international financial statements (IFRS). “The order of recognition of the IFRS for use in Russia does not imply their automatic introduction into the legal field,” the resolution says. If any standard of IFRS does not comply with Russian practices, then it will be prohibited by a special order of the Ministry of Finance.

According to Alexei Kudrin, when using national financial institutions in various fields of activity that are used to evaluate enterprises, conducting financial statements, tax activities, “we will use standards that are largely close to the IFRS”.

For the influx of Western investments, the transition to IFRS is an indispensable, but insufficient condition.

The Russian authorities generally consistently implement the program to create the MFC in Russia: in the same logic is the merger of the two Russian MICEX exchange and RTS in one.

The effectiveness of further measures will largely depend on obvious factors, as the predictability of the Russian legal field and law enforcement, the specialization of the Russian financial center, the stability of the Russian political system, the general business climate in the country (see also international, but very its own).

In this sense, the authorities are harmful to things like the story with death in prison Sergey Magnitsky.

As well as the reform of the police, ships and a lot of something else should also be conducted with an eye on the project of the financial center. Therefore, the reaction to the death of a lawyer was so sharp - even Dmitry Medvedev was forced to react. This kind of incidents can also bury the bright idea of ​​the MFC.