Employee Benefits Disclosure: Recent Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

This study explores the extent of employee benefits disclosure and short-term and long-term employee benefits plans maintained by the Bangladeshi companies. An employee benefits disclosure index and a form for collecting data about long-term and short-term employee benefit plans maintained by the companies are created and descriptive statistical analysis is applied to the collected data. The extent of employee benefits disclosure in Bangladesh is low. However, disclosure practice is not consistent across all the categories. Disclosure is very poor under IAS 19 Employee Benefits and companies do not provides any disclosure under IAS 26 Accounting and Reporting by Retirement Benefit Plans. Compliance and disclosure under local regulations in Bangladesh are very good. Recognized provident fund and gratuity fund are the two most common long-term employee benefits provided by the companies and they are sharing profits with their employees. But companies don’t provide any detailed disclosure regarding other short-term employee benefits and defined benefit plans. The disclosure pattern of foreign companies is far better than that of domestic companies. Relevant authorities should take the necessary step to ensure full compliance with disclosure provisions of IAS 19 as well as IAS 26 and encourage them to provide detailed disclosure regarding short-term employee benefits.