Third Regional Conference of Accountants and Chartered Accountants “Generation with Vision – Profession with Future”

The conference, held in Skopje, brought together representatives from institutions, international organizations, the professional community and the business sector, with the aim of exchanging experiences and discussing contemporary challenges in financial reporting, digitalization and the implementation of international standards.

Within the framework of the panel discussion dedicated to international standards and digitalization of financial reporting, the Director emphasized that if financial reporting systems are standardized, digitally structured and machine-readable, statistical institutions can establish direct connections with these data sources. This will enable automatic downloading of granular data and the possibility of greater analytics, which leads to a reduction in the burden on reporting units and limiting the need to conduct separate statistical surveys. The aim of such a system is to apply the principle of “data supplied once – multiple use”.

Business accounting and national accounts are not conceptually the same: one works with microdata and accounting principles, the other with statistical aggregates and the SNA methodology. However, data from financial statements are the main source in the compilation of national accounts and therefore higher quality of accounting data, harmonized with international standards, leads to the provision of consistent and high-quality statistical data.