The World Bank Group has initiated strengthening of financial reporting in South East Europe, through the “The Road to Europe Program of Accounting Reform and Institutional Strengthening (REPARIS)”.
This program aims to create a transparent policy environment and effective institutional framework for corporate reporting within eight countries located in south central and south-east Europe. The regional activities of this program are focused on creating awareness and a reform-enabling environment while the country focused activities aim to support implementation of those reforms in each participating country.
Albania is an active participant in this program with the will to contribute to foreign direct and portfolio investment, foster private and financial sector developments, improve the business environment and investment climate, and facilitate potential integration into (or harmonization with) the European Union. The reform program in Albania is divided into three phases:
Enhancing the Institutional Framework;
Strengthening of the Institutional Capacity;
Raising Awareness on Corporate Financial Reporting and Statutory Audit.
The objective consists in improving transparency and disclosure of financial information in filing and publication of statutory financial statements.
EDF provided support to National Register Centre to establish software, regulations and processes, as well as capacity building so to improve its activities in collecting financial statements/audit reports and making them available to the public. More in detail as below:
Legal and financial advisory consisting in a full review of the legislation concerning the filing and publication of statutory financial statements and compliance to Acquis Communautaire.
Design of the National Business Center software upgrade to file in Xml format achieving the elaboration of reliable data inputs.
The users of such financial information are analysts, investors, creditors, who are using financial information for resource allocation purposes (lending, investment, etc.), but also the general public in case of SOEs or public interest entities.
The objective consists in increasing the awareness of the users of financial statements.
Under this assignment our resources were allocated to perform:
Selection of usable outputs information, reshaping and tailoring to the needs of specific users and disseminate it by using direct communication means to the users, identified through building a database with the contacts and profile of 6'000 professionals and institutions that benefited.
Advertising tasks and benefits, through mass media as well as organizing event with the key actors of financial reporting industry and interested institutions.