Research On Biological Assets Information Disclosure Of Listed Companies In China

Agriculture is the foundation of the national economic construction and development department in China, its rise and fall is closely connected with the development of the national economy, related to the stability of the country’s social political life. Companies which engaged in agricultural production in our country are numerous. At present, there are more than hundred agricultural listed companies in China, and there are40listed companies with agriculture as the main business in agriculture, forestry, husbandry and fishery. Biological assets as an indispensable part of enterprise assets of companies in agriculture, forestry, husbandry and fishery, is the important means of production in agricultural enterprises. Biological assets represent living animals or plants. They need to experience the stage of growth, transformation, production and reproduction. Because of the complexity and the particularity of biological assets, how to scientifically and correctly account and disclose biological assets in agricultural enterprises has become a worldwide problem.For the accounting of biological assets in agricultural enterprises, China promulgated the " Accounting Standards for Enterprise No.5-Biological Assets" in February5,2006, standardizing accounting calculation and information disclosure related to production and business activities which concerning biological assets in Chinese enterprises. This improves the status of biological assets information disclosure of listed companies before the promulgation of Standards, which is not unified, subjective, and inferior. However, comparing with IAS41, China’s guidelines for information disclosure of biological assets are still unclear in many articles, thus the disclosure of the listed companies in China for the biological assets remain some problems such as inadequate information disclosure, disclosure of poor comparability and consistency, even after Biological Assets Accounting Standards was promulgated. Therefore, research on biological assets information disclosure status quo has a certain theoretical significance and practical significance.Based on agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery listing company as object, this article studies their biological asset information disclosure of the status quo, reveals the problems existing in the information disclosure of biological assets of listed companies through descriptive statistical analysis and case analysis, and to analyze the reasons, finally put forward the corresponding improvement suggestions aiming at the problem. In this paper, the concrete content is divided into six parts:The first part is the introduction, expounds research background and practical significance of the research for this article in detail, also introduces the research methods, the research framework and ideas of the paper, and lastly the contribution of this paper expected to achieve and deficiencies existing in the writing.The second part is the literature review, mainly including following two sections:biological assets literature review and the information disclosure literature review. Biological assets literature review including biological assets accounting rules, biological assets follow-up measurement and measurement basis, value evaluation and the biological asset disclosure. Information disclosure literature review including timeliness and authenticity of information disclosure, influencing factors of information disclosure, content of information disclosure as well as three aspects.The third chapter is the concept of biological assets, characteristics and the theoretical analysis related to information disclosure of biological assets. First it introduced the concept of biological assets, elaborated the content and scope of biological assets included, specified the difference of biological assets from the ordinary and then elaborate the information disclosure related to the theory of biological assets.The fourth part is to analyze the current situation of biological assets information disclosure in China’s agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery listed company. After the definition of range of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, we selected the40agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery listed companies between2010and2012to study. Analysis content include mainly the number of the company’s disclosure of biological assets, the proportion, biological asset information disclosurecontent, carrier and so on.The fifth part is the case analysis of the information disclosure of listed companies’ biological assets. This paper selected two listed companies as cases, analysis problems of their biological assets information disclosure and specific performance.The sixth part is the problems of biological asset information disclosure of listed companies, the causes and suggestions for improvement. Through detailed analysis of the fourth and fifth chapters, we sum up the problems of biological assets disclosure such as lack of detailed practices, disclosure is not standardized, incomplete, lack of systematic information disclosure of biological assets and comparability existed in China’s listed companies. The main causes of these problems are in five areas:lack of business knowledge, information disclosure cost constraints, the need to maintain or enhance the share prices, the demand ofinformation users inmarket is not strong enough. Finally, the article made recommendations on improving the biological assets of the listed company information disclosure from three angles:Improve information disclosure norms of biological assets, improve awareness of information disclosure and build regulation, forensic system of biological asset information disclosure in order to improve the quality of China’s listed companies disclosure of biological assets and protect the interests of information users.The contribution of this paper is that:Since the study of biological assets accounting starts late, there is little research for information disclosure of listed company’s biological assets, specifically on agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries. Therefore, this paper use listed companies of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery as research object, hand-counted40annual report of listed companies between2010and2012, combined with accounting standards and disclosure norms related to biological assets to conducted a detailed statistical analysis on the percent of biological assets accounting in China’s listed companies of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, proposed information disclosure’s information disclosure problems of listed companies and put forward corresponding recommendations for improvement from multiple perspectives. This has great theoretical and practical significance to improve information disclosure of the biological assets of listed companies.However, there inevitable limitations and disadvantages of a certain degree during the writing process, due to the theoretical level of author, lack of research experience and limitations of research conditions, mainly in:1, although this article discusses information disclosure of biological assets of listed companies in agriculture, content forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries, the carriers, integrity and other issues, but it lack a certain of practical basis.2, as our study of biological assets accounting, information disclosure is still in the exploratory stage, the relevant accounting policy will continue to change, so we need to constantly follow-up study.3, In the disclose information of biological assets of listed companies, that might identify the level of integrity with a certain degree of subjectivity which may affect the conclusions of the study to a certain extent, so it needs further exploration by using other methods in future studies.