International Accounting Standards and Environmental Disclosure: Evidence from Egypt.

Abstract

Accounting for the environmental disclosures is receiving increasing attention, So, the major question to be answered through this paper is whether there are standards for environmental disclosures and who apply them in the economic sectors in order to provide full information to all stakeholders especially investors, customers, and creditors in any industrial society. The main objective of the study is to verify the assumption of the existence of Accounting Standards related to environmental disclosures and the capability of applying these standards especially in the Egyptian industrial corporations. The study presents the literature review related to the topic as well as the nature of the environmental disclosures according to whatever issued from the accounting standards and the experience of some industrial corporations from different countries. Also, the study presents environmental disclosures models and frameworks and then presents a suggested model to explain the relationship between accounting standards and the stakeholders. Ten Egyptian corporations have been selected as a sample of the study to review and evaluate their environmental disclosure during 1998 and 1999. The results indicate that for the ten corporations reviewed within the study, all of them made the environmental disclosures without any reference to any of the Accounting Standards mentioned in the study, but they comply with the Environmental Law No. 4 of 1994. The paper concludes with five recommendations in addition to the future researches with emphasis to environmental issues.