28 March 2013
The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has today issued a
Request for Information as an early step in its reactivated Rate-regulated
Activities research project. The objective of the Request for Information
is to identify a range of rate-regulatory schemes to help determine the scope of
the research project. The deadline for responses is 30 May 2013.
In
July 2009 the IASB published the Exposure Draft Rate-regulated Activities (the
'2009 ED'), which focused on a particular type of rate-regulatory scheme (a
cost-of-service scheme). Respondents to the 2009 ED expressed divergent
views as to how the consequences of rate regulation should be reflected in
financial statements, if at all. Many suggested that the scope of the
project should be expanded to look at a wider variety of rate regulation in
order to identify common characteristics from which accounting guidance might be
developed.
The original Rate-regulated Activities project was
suspended in September 2010 but has now restarted. The Request for
Information asks specific questions about the objectives of rate regulation and
how those objectives are reflected in the rate-setting mechanisms employed by
rate regulators. The fact patterns identified through this Request for
Information and other research will be used to develop a Discussion Paper that
will analyse the common features of rate regulation. The aim of the
Discussion Paper is to identify what information about the consequences of rate
regulation would be most useful for users of IFRS financial statements and
whether the IASB should develop specific guidance for accounting for those
consequences.
The Request for Information can be downloaded from the
IASB´s website. To view this document and submit a response, please
click here.