The IFRS Foundation has published the 2017 edition of its Pocket Guide to IFRS Standards: the global financial reporting language. In the past year, the profiles of how 10 additional jurisdictions are using IFRS standards have been added to the IFRS Foundation website. They are: Gambia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Liberia, Malawi, Montenegro, Namibia, Qatar and Timor-Leste. Also, Saudi Arabia has decided to require IFRS standards from 2017 for all listed companies and in 2018 for all other publicly accountable entities.

The guide provides updated information on the progress towards global standards for accounting rules and practices. Some of the data it highlights includes:

• 93 per cent of the 150 jurisdictions have made a public commitment to IFRS standards;
• 84 per cent of the 150 jurisdictions already require the use of IFRS standards by all or most domestic public companies, with most of the remaining jurisdictions permitting their use;
• 85 of the 150 surveyed jurisdictions now require or permit use of the IFRS for SMEs® Standard—a self-contained Standard specifically designed for small and medium-sized companies without public accountability
• 27,000 of the 49,000 companies listed on the 88 largest securities exchanges in the world use IFRS Standards and 90 per cent of the companies that don’t use IFRS Standards are in China, India, Japan and the United States;
• while the European Union remains the single biggest jurisdiction using IFRS Standards, the combined GDP of jurisdictions outside the EU using IFRS standards ($27 trillion) is now greater than that of the EU itself ($19 trillion);
• in less than eight years since its publication, the IFRS for SMEs Standard is required or permitted in 57 per cent, or 85 of 150 profiled jurisdictions while a further 11 jurisdictions are considering doing so.