From law to standard: how have Uzbekistan's accounting rules taken shape from 1996 to today?

A newly hired accountant took the 2003 balance sheet out of the archive. The account numbers in it look like today's chart of accounts, but some of the names are different. There is no mistake: the report was prepared under the rules of its own time. Once you know how those rules came about and when they changed, reading an old document correctly becomes much easier.

A two-tier system

In Uzbekistan, accounting rules stand on two levels: - The Law. General principles, who keeps accounts, how statements and documents are stored and similar matters. This is the Law "On Accounting". - National standards (NAS, BHMS). Detailed rules on each topic: inventories, fixed assets, leases, the chart of accounts and so on. They are approved by ministerial order and registered with the Ministry of Justice.

The same link is visible in the preambles of the current standards: for example, the orders approving NAS No. 1 and NAS No. 21 were issued in accordance with the Law "On Accounting".

1996: the Law is adopted

The Law "On Accounting" was adopted on 30 August 1996 as No. 279-I (LexUZ, Spinform). The order approving NAS No. 20 states that the Law was published in 1996 in issue No. 9 of the Bulletin of the Oliy Majlis, Article 142.

1998–2004: the first wave of standards

After the Law, the tier beneath it was built. The "documents that have lost force" appendices of the current standards have preserved this history precisely: - 26 July 1998: NAS No. 1 "Accounting Policy and Financial Statements" was approved by the Ministry of Finance under No. 17-17/86 and registered with the Ministry of Justice on 14 August 1998 under No. 474. - 25 August 1998: NAS No. 3 "Statement of Financial Results" was approved under No. 43 (registration number 484). - 23 November 1999: the simplified procedure for small businesses (NAS No. 20) was approved under No. 87. - 9 September 2002: the chart of accounts (NAS No. 21) was approved by Order No. 103 of the Minister of Finance and registered on 23 October 2002 under No. 1181. - 12 May 2004: lease accounting (NAS No. 6) was approved by Order No. 75.

2009–2016: updates and a new version of the Law

A number of standards were later re-approved: NAS No. 6 on 6 April 2009 (No. 41), NAS No. 24 on 5 August 2009 (No. 79), NAS No. 20 on 16 July 2013 (Order No. 70).

The Law itself, after being in force for nearly 20 years, was adopted in a new version: Law No. ZRU-404 of 13 April 2016. The Senate approved it on 31 March 2016 (UzA, report by the Embassy of Uzbekistan).

2024–2025: a major overhaul

In 2024 most of the standards were approved in new versions. For example, NAS No. 1 is now called "Presentation of Financial Statements and Accounting Policies": it was approved by Order No. 130 of the Minister of Economy and Finance of 14 June 2024 and entered into force on 1 January 2025. The chart of accounts (NAS No. 21) was also renewed: Order No. 191 of 14 November 2024, again with an effective date of 1 January 2025. These orders ended the force of the 1998 and 2002 texts.

Calculated with Python, the 1998 NAS No. 1 was in force for about 26.4 years and the 2002 chart of accounts for about 22.3 years.

Then and now

Example: reading the "Yulduz mebel" archive

The following example was prepared by the author; the company is hypothetical.

The hypothetical "Yulduz mebel" LLC has been operating since 2003. The new chief accountant, Feruza, wants to review the annual reports in the archive. For each report she wrote down in a table which main documents she needs to consult:

Practical lesson: "checking" an old report against today's rules leads to wrong conclusions. First establish which year the report belongs to, then which text was in force that year. In the report for a year in which a standard changed (for example, 2025), also look separately for notes on the transition to the new rules.

Link to the previous period: in the 20th century, international standards (the IASC, later the IASB) began turning accounting into a common language understood by different countries. Uzbekistan's national standards also took shape in this period, in the years after independence. The next stage: accounting moving into computer software.