The development of the role of the statutory audit in the transitional Polish economy

The paper presents an analysis of the short form statutory audit reports relating to Polish listed companies from 1992 to 1996 inclusive (over 200 reports) and a sample of unlisted business entities for 1992, 1993 and 1995 (over 1,100 reports). The analysis focuses upon segmentation in the market for audit services as between foreign and domestic auditors; evolving attitudes to corporate governance as revealed through the addressees of short form statutory audit reports; the perceived nature of the statutory audit task as revealed in the incidence and nature of qualified audit opinions and explanatory notes to the unqualified opinions. The analysis confirms that Polish statutory audit regulation in relation to the short form audit report is comparable de jure to Western European norms. However, de facto, fewer going-concern qualifications are observed than may be expected in a society undergoing the economic restructuring implicit in the transition from a command to a market economy. In economic conditions characterized by high levels of systemic instability associated with the transition process, individual statutory auditors understandably eschew commercial judgements and focus on the legality of the accounting record. Such opinions may nevertheless be of value in a transitional economy.