Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Its Effect on the Quality of Financial Reporting: the Case of Kiambu County

Abstract

The goal of IFRS for SMEs is to simplify financial reporting on SMEs by generating high-quality financial statements that can help capital providers and other participants make sound economic decisions. This study examined the adoption of IFRS for SMEs and its effect on the quality of financial reporting in Kiambu County. It examined how SMEs operationalized the qualitative aspects of financial reporting using an attitudinal research design. The respondents of this study comprised of managers and loan officers of 14 SACCOs headquartered in Kiambu County and licensed by SASRA. The survey adopted the 21-item index for operationalization of qualitative characteristics (Beest, Braam, & Suzanne, 2009) for collection of data. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and analysis of variance were used to analyze the data. The results of this study indicated that comparability has a positive and significant effect on quality of financial reporting (β= 0.281, p<0.016). Relevance, faithful representation, understandability and verifiability had (β = 0.065, p< 0.546), (β =0.112, p < 0.287), (β= 0.011, p< 0.332) and (β= 0.018, p< 0.870) respectively indicated a positive but insignificant effect on the quality of financial reporting. Timeliness (β = -0.023, p< 0.830) indicated a negative and insignificant effect on the quality of financial reporting. This confirms that the adoption of IFRS for SMES has improved the Quality of Financial Reporting though the improvement is not significant.