the IASS is a necessity to move towards a capitalist economy encourage the flow of foreign capital to invest in Egypt and participate in the global economy (Professional Accountant and Academic interviewee 5)
the IASS were acted upon to reactivate the ECM and facilitate the transformation process from socialism to capitalism. Sami (2001) argues "poor accounting standards inevitably impact negatively on the stock market " and therefore suggested the use of the IASS internationalize the ECM. On the same vein while investigating how the IASS were in conflict with the Egyptian socialist culture, Dahawy et al (2002,pp. 203,204 ) emphasized that.
disclosure is a key component of IAS reporting requirements the transition from a centralized economy characterized by secrecy to a market economy characterized by full disclosure requires a fundamental shift that IASS can facilitate.
mimic isomorphism. the above mentioned analysis shows that the Egyptian standard-setters mainly the members of the ECM authority the accounting profession and the ministry of Economy seem to prefer the adoption of international accounting practices instead of developing domestic accounting standards in an interview with ah academic who is a member of the ECM authority he said.
On one hand we had to change the old accounting practices gives the changes in the economic climate On the other hand when we wanted to engender a change however it appears that there is no domestic individual users demand for specific information. the three Egyptian reference groups are the tax department that follows certain tax accounting rules, banks that have their own ways to grant loans and domestic individual investors in an emerging capital market. consequently we had to rely on the available international standards as a reference to develop our own domestic ones (An academic Member in the ECM - interviewee 6).
By the mid -1990s, some members of the ECM authority attended the us seventh Annual international institute training programmed (Zhony,2002 p. 22 ). The us government funded these programmers and provided the required technical assistance to exchange expertise and knowledge with the Egyptian regulators. these training programmed have sharpened the Egyptian regulators knowledge concerning the types of securities and initial public offerings in attrition to promoting other regulations that resemble the "international marker practices" including the IASs. Accordingly, the ECM regulators have introduced some measures to bring the Egyptian marker closer to the international standards and adopted the IASs as a part of these measures.
Similarly, the Egyptian accounting profession has translated some of the IASs that were deemed suitable to be applied in the Egyptian environment, some interviewees stated that "these translated standards include some mistakes (interviewees 2 and another academic interviewee 9). Despite these changes, the public organizations continued to use the 1960s UASs. On questioning one practitioner in a public organization, he stated that
There is no legal requirement to apply the IASs in preparing the financial reports therefore why should we apply them (Financial Manger in a public organization interviewee.)
Consequently the head of the CAA issued a decree aiming at harmonizing the 1960s UAS with that of the IASs (EL - Wakae El - Masria). The Decree required the use of the IASs as a supplementary framework to bring changes in the 1960s regulations. It permitted the use of certain IASs for matters that have no standards in the 1960s regulations.