The announcement was made in the ASC Chairman's keynote address at the IFRS Foundation's IFRS Conference currently held in Singapore.

Singapore has been following a path of converging Singapore Financial Reporting Standards (SFRS) with IFRS for Singapore listed companies for many years and Singapore has adopted substantially all IFRSs issued by the IASB as SFRSs, albeit at times with different effective dates and transition requirements. However, the timeline for full convergence was adjusted to await developments in the major projects on revenue recognition, financial instruments and the impairment loss model, all of which are of significance to Singapore entities. Given the mandatory or expected mandatory effective date of 1 January 2017 and 2018 for the revenue recognition and financial instruments projects, respectively, the ASC has now decided to introduce a new financial reporting framework that is identical to IFRS for Singapore listed companies for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2018. This framework will also be made available for voluntary application by all non-listed Singapore-incorporated companies at the same time.

The ASC argues that aligning full convergence with IFRSs with the effective date of major new IASB pronouncements would mean that Singapore companies would not have to close existing differences in transition requirements between SFRSs and IFRSs while transitioning to a fundamentally new standard shortly afterwards and would minimise the restatement of comparatives on transition to the new framework. The implementation lead time of more than three years would also enable enable stakeholders to appreciate the potential impact of, and prepare for, the transition to the new framework.The ASC also comments:

[Full convergence with IFRSs] will also place Singapore-listed companies on a level playing field with their counterparts in the IFRS community and eliminate any perception that they may be applying standards that are different from IFRS, even though they have been IFRS-compliant in a substantive manner for more than a decade.

Please click for the following information on the ASC website:

• press release
• full text of keynote address given by the ASC Chairman at the IFRS Foundation's IFRS Conference