A new year usually brings about introspection, reflection, and quite often, change. Over the last few months, we have spent time analysing and assessing what our strategic priorities should be over the next five years. We wanted our vision to reflect the importance of the ASB’s work in the broader society

Our vision is to

            “Strengthen democracy in South Africa through relevant, transparent financial reporting”.
While we cannot fundamentally change what we do as the ASB, we can change how we do it, and in doing so, hopefully impact how our work is both understood and used. We acknowledge that people have the greatest ability to both impact, and give effect to, the ASB’s work.

As we derive our mandate from the PFMA, we will continue to develop and publish reporting requirements for the public sector financial statements, we will also consider our role in sustainability reporting. As we have no explicit sustainability role at present, there will likely be changes to the PFMA during the year that will provide the ASB with some level of authority in this space.

The Board will also approve a new three-year work programme in June of this year to support the new strategy. A new focus area of our work programme will be the users of the financial statements. Users of the financial statements do not understand the role of the financial statements and how the financial statements can be used as a tool for decision-making and holding officials accountable. Our goal is to educate users by providing them with easy to understand and easily accessible information to empower them to better participate in government’s processes. We will continue to provide preparers with tools to enhance their application of the Standards on our YouTube Channel.

By now, you would be aware of the Knowledge Hub – a joint initiative with the Office of the Accountant-General. The Knowledge Hub brings together our collective resources on GRAP in one place. We often hear from stakeholders that more guidance is needed on the Standards, more tools should be made available, and there should be more opportunity to engage on the Standards. The Knowledge Hub aims to address all these issues, and more. Keeping the Knowledge Hub relevant will be an evolutionary process, and we look forward to hearing from you on how we can improve it.

I don’t want to give too much away, as you will hear next week from our Head of Technical, Elizna van der Westhuizen, more about the ASB possible work programme for 2027-2029.

I started off emphasising the importance of people in the success of our work. As finance professionals we have a vital role in government. Our purpose is much more than the budget, the financial statements, internal controls and good governance. We have a broader purpose, and that is to empower our communities and our citizens to engage government more effectively and build a better society for us all.

Best wishes for what I hope will be a spectacular 2025