The 87th AFA Council Meeting, 29 Jun 2006, Manila, Philippines

The 87th AFA Council Meeting was held on 29 June 2006 in Manila, Philippines. The meeting was attended by representatives of its Primary Members from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Representatives of its Associate Members present were CPA Australia and ACCA.

Issues discussed at the meeting, among others were:

AFA Constitution & By-Laws and the Guidelines for Associate Members
The Council agreed to amend the AFA Constitution to replace the Thailand’s representation from Institute of Certified Accountants and Auditors of Thailand (ICAAT) to Federation of Accounting Professions (FAP). Further amendment would be to include additional primary members which are Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam. The Secretary General was requested to prepare a formal amendment of the AFA Constitution to be approved at the next AFA Council Meeting. Member bodies were also requested by the President to review the AFA Constitution and By-Laws to see if there are further amendments to be made. The proposed changes are to be submitted to the Secretary General to be tabled at the AFA Council Meeting.

AFA Strategic Plan
The President tabled the proposal of the 2006-2007 AFA Strategic Plan to the Council. It was mentioned that the objectives to the Plan could be achieved by assigning each of the items identified in the Plan to a member body as e leader to coordinate and monitor the progress of each plan. The AFA Council then approved the proposal and proceeded to identify the member body which will be assigned a particular project.

ASEAN MRA Framework on Accountancy Services
The President updated the council members on the ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) Framework at the last ASEAN Coordinating Committee on Services (CCS) Meeting held in Singapore. Basically, the MRA Framework, being framework in nature, does not provide for implementation and operationalisation among ASEAN Member States. Due to the differences in domestic regulations and social and economic developments of each ASEAN Member State, the MRA Framework acknowledges that multilateral MRAs between ASEAN Member States for the accountancy sector would be very difficult to achieve. For this purpose, this MRA Framework acts as a tool to encourage ASEAN Member States to explore bilateral MRAs in the accountancy sector.

Working Committee on SMEs
It was suggested by the President that AFA sets up a working committee on SMEs and that the working committee will then provide comments to IASB as a region. It was also suggested that AFA comes up with a common framework of SME standards while waiting for the final ones being issued by IASB. Member bodies informed the President that they need to have an internal consultation before they are able to nominate persons to the working group.

Venue of the 88th AFA Council Meeting
The 88th AFA Council Meeting will be held sometime in September, preferably before 25 September 2007 taking into consideration of the coming fasting month. The meeting will be held in Singapore.