Amendments are proposed to GRAP 1 in Exposure Draft 201 on Improvements to the Standards of GRAP (2022). One of the amendments to the Standard is on the disclosure of accounting policies.

The proposed amendment is taken from the amendments to IAS 1 on Presentation of Financial Statements that replaces references to “significant accounting policies” with “material accounting policy information”. The International Accounting Standards Board noted from their Discussion Paper on Disclosure Initiative - Principles of Disclosure that entities differed in their views about what constitutes a significant accounting policy.

GRAP 1 currently refers to the disclosure of significant accounting policies. The Standards of GRAP do not define the term “significant”. The Board agreed that in order to maintain convergence with the IFRS^® Accounting Standards and to provide clarity on which accounting policies are important to be disclosed, the amendment should be adopted for the Standards of GRAP.

The term “material” is clearly defined in the Standards of GRAP. With the recent amendments to GRAP 1 relating to materiality and the development of the Guideline on the Application of Materiality to Financial Statements, the term “material” is familiar to stakeholders. The proposed improvement to GRAP 1 replaces references to “significant” accounting policies with “material” accounting policies. The proposed amendment is to be applied prospectively.

To comment on this improvement please refer to the Invitation to Comment. The documents for ED 201 can be accessed here.