Wednesday, 14 October 2009
On the occasion of the International Day of Standards, RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan visited the National Institute of Standards. The Prime Minister walked round the labs and got acquainted with the Institute’s current status and development opportunities.
The head of government congratulated the staff of the Institute on their professional holiday.
Then the Prime Minister called at the training-publishing center of the accounting department of Armenia’s bookkeepers and auditors’ Association where he handed in qualification certificates to the graduates. In his congratulatory remarks, Tigran Sargsyan said in particular, “The national institute of standards is marking its professional holiday. The main mission of the Armenian association of bookkeepers and auditors is to help introduce international standards countrywide, and see that our businessmen should adhere to the logic of such standards. You can help ease the life of our businessmen, households, manufacturers by providing for our security. Said security has a physical and economic dimension. We all will feel much better living in a law-abiding society where economic entities shall state their financial position fairly and accurately. Economic entities are sure to win public trust as soon as their financial statements come to reflect the actual state of affairs enabling consumers to get a fair image of their position.
Unfortunately, we still face serious problems in the field of accounting and auditing as the transactions carried out by some entities are not transparent to the public and households do not trust in their financial statements which is a strong impediment to economic development. The strengthening of the Association will help build up public confidence, largely reduce expenditures and eliminate most of redundant intermediation.
According to the Prime Minister, there are serious concerns as to whether the Association is well-organized and can develop without further financial assistance.”
The staff trained by the Association, including the auditors, will be in greater demand on the labor market as audit companies will have extra workload starting from 2010: there is a legal requirement stipulating that large enterprises shall be studied by independent audit companies, with the findings having to be published afterwards: “This means that hundreds of large enterprises will need the services of highly qualified audit companies.”
The head of government further noted that we have such audit companies which endorse financial statements without any checks and conformity to accounting regulations. The market should be cleared of such companies.
The executives of the Association were told to seriously discuss ways of preparing qualified staff supposed to assume responsibility for auditing economic entities starting from the year 2010.
