As an internationally recognized business language, accounting is an important foundation for modern socio-economic activities and a crucial guarantee for promoting international economic and trade exchanges.
In order to promote the economic and trade exchanges and capital flows of the “the Belt and Road” countries, the “the Belt and Road” countries’ initiative on strengthening cooperation in accounting standards was launched in 2019, and it has been six years since then. For more than six years, the Ministry of Finance of China has been working with the accounting standard setters of the “the Belt and Road” countries, and has achieved a series of fruitful results.
In the opinion of insiders, countries jointly building the “the Belt and Road” have different cultures, use multiple languages and more than ten accounting standards. Promoting the interconnection of accounting systems in the “the Belt and Road” countries plays an important role in facilitating intra regional trade and financing.
During the second “the Belt and Road” International Cooperation Summit Forum, the Ministry of Finance of China, together with the Ministry of Finance of Laos, the Mongolian Institute of Certified Public Accountants and other nine national accounting standard setting institutions, jointly launched and released the initiative under the principle of “consultation, joint construction and sharing”, established a multilateral cooperation platform under the framework of the Summit Forum, and was included in the list of achievements of the second “the Belt and Road” International Cooperation Summit Forum.
According to the initiative, the Ministry of Finance of China held the first “the Belt and Road” National Accounting Standards Cooperation Forum in Xiamen in November 2019. So far, the “the Belt and Road” National Accounting Standards Cooperation Forum has been successfully held for six times, and six joint communiques have been issued. For over six years, members have utilized the forum as a platform to pragmatically explore accounting and sustainable hot issues, continuously strengthening their capabilities.
——Consolidate the mechanism and draw a concentric circle of mutual benefit.
In November 2019, the members discussed at the first forum and formed the Arrangement on Deepening the Mechanism Construction of the “the Belt and Road” National Accounting Standards Cooperation Forum, which established the goal of “technical information exchange, policy publicity, capacity building, and cooperative research” and the forum as the platform to jointly promote the cooperation of accounting standards.
For over six years, members have relied on the forum to strengthen technical discussions, information exchange, and experience sharing in the field of accounting and sustainability, promoting accounting and sustainability construction and capacity enhancement, and contributing to the construction of globally unified high-quality accounting and sustainability standards.
——Training and training to build ‘soft power’ in capacity building.
For more than six years, the accounting and sustainable capacity building of the “the Belt and Road” countries has been steadily advancing, and efforts have been made to provide talent support for the economic development of countries. Since 2019, the National Accounting Institutes in Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen have also given full play to their respective resource advantages and held nearly a hundred training and seminars for countries jointly building the “the Belt and Road”, with nearly 10000 participants.
——Develop a team and expand the interconnected “circle of friends”.
Over the past six years, the number of initiative members has doubled from 10 to 21, and the number of observers has increased from 0 to 8. The regional scope has expanded from being highly concentrated in Asia and sporadically distributed in Europe and Oceania to covering five continents, and the interconnected network is constantly expanding.
Just next week, the seventh “the Belt and Road” National Accounting Standards Cooperation Forum will be held in Shanghai. This forum will be the largest and most attended by countries and regions since its establishment, with nearly 30 participating countries and regions, and more than 130 Chinese and foreign participants.
Experts said that closer cooperation in the accounting field and more connected accounting standards will provide more help for promoting the high-quality development of the “the Belt and Road”. (Reporters Shen Cheng and Sang Tong)