Since 2005,MASB had been joining IASB in the process of developing new financial reporting standards in order to ensure the standards were acceptable prior to issuing them in Malaysia.

For this year, The Malaysian Accounting Standards Board (MASB) is reviewing four financial reporting standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and and plans to issue the standards this year if the consultative process run well. Besides this, MASB is also reviewing five other interpretations.

The four standards MASB is reviewing are:-

· IAS41 Agriculture,

· IFRS4 Insurance Contracts,

· IFRS7 Financial Instruments: Disclosure, and

· IFRS8 Operating Segments.

According to MASB executive director Nordin Mohd Zain :

· Though there are fewer new standards to be introduced by IASB this year, Malaysia needed to issue the pending standards to keep pace with IASB

· In the past, MASB can be more definitive in issuing a particular standard because many of the standards are easy. However, Standards of late are complex.

· IASB had extended the deadline to Jan 1, 2009 for countries to fully comply with the financial reporting standards issued by IASB.

· On the agriculture standard, which had been deliberated since 2000, there were difficulties in applying the standard, which required plantation companies to fair-value their “biological assets”, including livestock. Todate, MASB had shared views with plantation companies in the country in relation to the practicality of the agriculture standard, and had presented to IASB the Malaysian perspective on the standard last year.

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