Sunday, September 24, 2006

Activists inspire accounting review

The rulemakers for global accounting have agreed for the first time to review some of their practices in response to pressure from non-governmental organisations critical of mining and oil companies.

The International Acc-ounting Standards Board decided that a coalition of some 80 NGOs had raised legitimate questions about what it could do to improve the transparency of oil and mining groups operating in the developing world.

The coalition wants the IASB to require country-by-country reporting on the operations of multinational companies.

Greater transparency - including country-specific information on turnover, profit, taxation and payments to governments - would enable stakeholders to better assess the impact of companies' activities, the NGOs say.

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