The figure below shows how South East European Partnership on Accountancy Development (SEEPAD) and its member professional bodies together are not yet in compliance with International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) standards. The graph illustrates to what degree a gap exists between each International Education Standards (IES) of IFAC Statements of Membership Obligations (SMO) 2. There are visible deficiencies across all seven IFAC IES. To read the Report Abstract click on the following link BISTA Identifies Gaps in Accounting Education.

The Global Accountancy Education Benchmarking (GAEB) pilot project specifically targeted the accounting profession and measured the gaps that exist between South East Europe accounting practices and common international standards as identified by IFAC. Using IFAC SMOs, the project focused on SMO 2, which covers the IES in the accounting profession. In cooperation with the SEEPAD, the GAEB project successfully identified gaps across the board for both the member countries and the region as a whole.

When broken down into the individual SEEPAD members, it is apparent that each country or region has deficiencies in different IFAC IESs that reach the Critical Deficiencies (Limited local capacity and/or resources are available to resolve compliance problems. External expertise and resources are necessary to achieve results in a reasonable time) and Urgent Development (Virtually no local capacity and/or resources to close a serious compliance issue. External development and input of expertise and resources are necessary) levels.