Microfinance Consensus Guidelines: Disclosure Guidelines for Financial Reporting by Microfinance Institutions

Publication Date: Jul 2003
Published by: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP)
Document Type: Paper

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What are the guidelines in preparing audited or unaudited financial statements?

These guidelines, approved for interim use by the 26 donor agencies that are members of CGAP,specify information that should be included in MFI financial reporting in order to permit a meaningful analysis of the MFIs financial position. The guidelines call for the reporting of certain information, including the accounting method used in deriving that information, but they do not direct the choice of accounting method or the format to be used;thus, the guidelines can be used in any country.The most common use of these guidelines will be in the terms of reference for external audits, where the auditor will be asked to opine as to whether the MFI's financial statements comply with the guidelines

Includes the following sections:

• financial statements
• information from past years
• segment reporting for multiservice microfinance institutions
• microloan portfolio accounting issues
• portfolio quality and management
• donations
• details of liabilities
• other significant accounting policies