The adoption of MPERS in Malaysia: a pathway to harmonised financial reporting for SMEs

Globalisation has significantly expanded international trade and cross-border investment. As businesses increasingly operate across borders, the need for consistent, comparable, and transparent financial reporting has grown more urgent. However, many business entities, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), still prepare accounts using localised accounting standards, resulting in inconsistencies that hinder international comparability and decision-making (World Bank, 2012). To address this, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) introduced the International Financial Reporting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs) (IASB, 2009), which was later localised in Malaysia through the Malaysian Private Entities Reporting Standard (MPERS) (MASB, 2014).