The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has published proposals to amend international accounting rules, which could validate China's new regulations issued on Jan. 1.

The main change proposed by the IASB is to reduce the amount of information entities that are required to divulge about related parties in their financial statements.

Some entities that are related "only because they are each state-controlled or significantly influenced by the state" will be exempt from disclosure of transactions, according to the IASB proposals.

"The proposals aim to remove a significant burden of disclosure from some entities, particularly in jurisdictions with extensive state control of, and significant influence over, business," said IASB Chairman David Tweedie.

The Board believes that eliminating requirements that produce information that is of little or no value will benefit prepares and users of financial statements, he added.

Under China's new regulations, state-controlled entities are not necessarily regarded as related parties and transactions between them do not have to be reported.

"The new international accounting standards will use China's new accounting rules as a reference, as they are more cost-effective," Wayne Upton, Director of Research at the IASB, told Xinhua.

"Chinese companies that want to go public overseas will have a much lighter workload if the proposals are implemented," said Wang Guoliang, chief financial officer of PetroChina Company Limited. "State-controlled companies do have difficulties complying with the international rules."

"PetroChina uses communication and transportation services from China Netcom (CNC) and other state-owned and state-controlled entities," he explained, "and under the current international standards, we have to make a lot of efforts to disclose all the transactions between them simply because we are all owned by the state."

A quarter of PetroChina's half-year report in 2006, before China's new accounting regulations came into effect, was devoted to information about related-party transactions.