IFRS adoption in the Gulf compared

IFRS adoption in the Gulf, compared

IFRS adoption in the Gulf means most of the region requires IFRS as issued by the IASB, but each country reaches that requirement through its own law and its own national body, and two markets, Egypt and Bahrain's Islamic finance sector, layer a local standard on top rather than using IFRS unmodified. It matters because a chart of accounts and a reporting pack built for one Gulf country's IFRS is not automatically valid evidence of compliance in the next one.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan all require IFRS in some form; Egypt requires Egyptian Accounting Standards, which are based on but not identical to IFRS. This guide sets out who mandates what, the fiscal-year and record-retention rules that sit alongside the accounting standard, and the Arabic-language and currency requirements that apply to the books themselves.

Full IFRS by Commercial Companies Law: Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain

Four Gulf states mandate IFRS as issued by the IASB through their general company law rather than a separate accounting-standards board, which means the requirement applies to companies broadly, not only to listed issuers.

• Qatar: IFRS/IAS required under Commercial Companies Law No. 11 of 2015, which mandates IFRS-compliant financial statements for listed companies and expects every company to keep records to IASB standards
• Kuwait: IFRS as issued by the IASB is mandatory for all companies under the Commercial Companies Law of 2016, set by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in consultation with the Kuwait Association of Accountants and Auditors
• Oman: IFRS, unamended, is required under the Commercial Companies Law (Royal Decree 18/2019) and Capital Market Authority regulations for listed entities; the annual tax return must be accompanied by audited accounts prepared under IFRS or an OTA-approved equivalent
• Bahrain: IFRS is required for both listed and unlisted companies' financial reporting, including consolidated statements, and is also mandated for banks by the Central Bank of Bahrain; Bahrain has no local GAAP of its own, having adopted IAS 1 in 1994 in the absence of local standards

Saudi Arabia: SOCPA's two-track endorsement

The Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA) mandated full IFRS for all listed companies from fiscal year 2017 and for unlisted companies from fiscal year 2018. Alongside full IFRS, SOCPA separately endorsed the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard, effective January 2018, for non-public-interest entities that do not need the full standard, giving Saudi businesses two tracks rather than one blanket requirement.

The default fiscal year is the Gregorian calendar year, 1 January to 31 December, though a different 12-month accounting year can be adopted with approval. Our separate guide on IFRS and your ERP covers what IFRS compliance means for accounting software specifically; this guide stays at the jurisdiction level.

The UAE: IFRS as the Corporate Tax accounting requirement

For Corporate Tax purposes, the UAE accepts only IFRS and IFRS for SMEs as valid accounting standards, under Ministerial Decision No. 114 of 2023; a taxable person must independently determine its taxable income from duly prepared, unconsolidated financial statements that meet one of these two standards. This makes IFRS compliance a tax-filing requirement in the UAE as much as a financial-reporting one, not a separate, optional layer on top of the tax return.

Where the Gulf departs from unmodified IFRS: Egypt and Bahrain's Islamic finance rules

Egypt is the clearest exception in the region: companies apply Egyptian Accounting Standards (EAS), which are based on but not identical to, and not as comprehensive as, IFRS as issued by the IASB. Ministerial Decision No. 69 of 2019 amended EAS to align it with IFRS 9 on financial instruments, IFRS 15 on revenue and IFRS 16 on leases, and a new EAS 50 on insurance contracts, based on IFRS 17, became effective for periods beginning on or after 1 July 2024. A business reporting under EAS is close to IFRS in most areas but should not describe its statements as IFRS financial statements.

Bahrain applies full IFRS as its base standard, but AAOIFI Financial Accounting Standards are compulsory for all Islamic banks in Bahrain, and for conventional banks that maintain Islamic windows, with IFRS guidance applied only where AAOIFI is silent. AAOIFI itself, a global Islamic-finance accounting standard-setter, is headquartered in Bahrain, established in 1991, which makes Bahrain the one Gulf market where a second, sector-specific standard sits directly alongside IFRS rather than replacing it. A Bahraini group with both a conventional and an Islamic banking arm therefore keeps two accounting rulebooks live at once, one for each arm, rather than picking a single standard for the whole group.

Jordan: full, unmodified IFRS since the 1990s

Jordan adopted IAS/IFRS in full, without modification, through the 1997 Company Law and the 2002 Securities Law. Companies whose securities trade in a public market must prepare financial statements under IFRS as issued by the IASB, under Article 14 of the Jordan Securities Commission's Instructions of Issuing Companies Disclosure, Accounting and Auditing Standards, and companies are registered and regulated for accounting and disclosure purposes by the Department of the Companies Controller and, for public shareholding companies, the Jordan Securities Commission and the Amman Stock Exchange.

Fiscal-year rules across the region

Most of the region defaults to the calendar year, but every country allows an exception on request, and the exception process is where an ERP set-up most often goes wrong.

• Saudi Arabia: Gregorian calendar year by default; a different 12-month accounting year can be adopted with approval
• Qatar: no separate general fiscal-year bullet beyond CIT filing rules, which run from the entity's own financial year end
• Oman: calendar year by default; a different year-end needs advance OTA permission and must then be used consistently; a new taxpayer's first tax year can run up to 18 months
• Jordan: calendar year by default; a different fiscal year-end needs prior approval from the Director General of the Income Tax Department
• Egypt: the tax year is simply the taxpayer's own financial year, with no separate calendar-year default to override

Record retention: what is confirmed, and what to check

Retention periods vary sharply in how well they are documented. Saudi Arabia's Law of Commercial Books requires accounting records to be kept for at least 10 years, separate from ZATCA's own 6-year minimum for e-invoicing and VAT records, so a Saudi business should apply whichever period is longer for a given record type. The UAE splits retention by regime: Corporate Tax records for at least 7 years, most VAT records for 5 years, capital asset records for 10 years and real-estate records for 15 years, and separately, the Commercial Companies Law sets a 5-year minimum for statutory books, so a UAE business needs to check which regime governs the specific record in front of it. Qatar requires books, registers and source documents to be retained for 10 years under its Commercial Companies Law.

For Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan, a single, clearly sourced statutory retention period could not be confirmed against an authoritative primary source in this research; confirm the current requirement with each country's Ministry of Commerce, tax authority or commercial registrar before relying on a specific number of years. Egypt has no separate records-retention law identified here, but its tax assessment statute of limitations of 5 years, extended to 6 years for tax evasion, is the practical driver of how long records need to be kept available.

Arabic-language and currency requirements for the books

Language and currency rules for the statutory books also differ by country, and only some of them are explicitly documented. Saudi Arabia requires accounting records to be kept in Arabic, amounts recorded in Saudi Riyals, and records stored within the Kingdom. The UAE allows daily records to be kept in English, but the Federal Tax Authority can request an Arabic translation of any record at any time, and accounting and tax records are generally maintained and reported in UAE Dirhams. Qatar requires corporate tax returns to be filed in Arabic for tax years starting on or after 1 January 2020. Oman requires accounts to be filed in Omani Rials unless the Oman Tax Authority approves a foreign currency, and requires accrual-basis accounting unless the OTA permits otherwise.

Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan have no single, clearly sourced statutory language-or-currency rule for the general books identified here beyond what is described above for specific filings; confirm the current requirement with the relevant authority before assuming English or a foreign currency is acceptable for statutory records in those markets.

Common mistakes building one chart of accounts for several Gulf entities

A group with entities across the region tends to repeat the same handful of mistakes.

• Assuming Egyptian statements are IFRS statements, rather than Egyptian Accounting Standards, which are close to but not identical to IFRS
• Applying full IFRS to a Saudi SME that would qualify for the simpler IFRS for SMEs track under SOCPA's separate endorsement
• Treating the UAE's 5-year Commercial Companies Law retention rule and its 7-year Corporate Tax retention rule as one requirement, rather than two that apply to different records
• Assuming a confirmed retention period exists for Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman or Jordan's general books, when the current research found none that could be sourced authoritatively
• Ignoring Bahrain's AAOIFI overlay for an Islamic bank or an Islamic window, and applying plain IFRS where AAOIFI actually governs

IFRS across the Gulf and Skyline Nexus ERP

Skyline Nexus ERP's chart-of-accounts template varies by currency at installation, a Saudi Riyal business gets VAT and GOSI accounts, a UAE Dirham business gets VAT accounts, and every other currency gets a general template with sales-tax accounts added, so a Gulf group can start each entity's books aligned to its own country from day one rather than adapting a single generic template after the fact. Account types and accounts carry both an English and an Arabic name, and the interface itself is available in Arabic and English, matching the bilingual requirement several Gulf regulators apply to filings.

Where a group wants a consolidated view across entities reporting under different national IFRS endorsements, Business Groups under Fiscal Authority Consolidation translate each member's trial balance into a common group currency and eliminate intercompany balances, while each entity's own books stay built to its own country's standard. Audit Trail and the one-click Audit Pack export give each entity's auditor the chart of accounts, trial balance, journal entries and statements a Gulf IFRS or EAS audit typically asks for, in one workbook.