Nowadays, the relevance of fair value in financial reporting is gaining impetus and recent discussions are moving in the trend of full fair value reporting. Small and medium-sized entities are not ignored in this instance. The move to new reporting standards results in various challenges for different interest groups such as auditors, preparers and regulators. The main objective of the study was to establish the fair value implementation challenges facing SMEs in the agricultural sector with evidence from regulatory bodies in Ghana. The study established that there is lack of methodological relationship between existing local laws and IFRS and absence of involvement of regulatory bodies in financial reporting standards setting. In light of these challenges, the study recommends involvement of regulatory bodies in standard setting and consideration should also be given to local laws when setting international standards.

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This study assesses the factors influencing the discontinuance of the norm-based and incremental budgeting approaches in higher education in Ghana. The National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE – the coordinating body for tertiary education in Ghana) and the Ministry of Education of Ghana established norms in the early 1990s to assist higher education institutions in planning and ensuring efficiency of their operations and foster performance monitoring and evaluation. The norms also serve as standardized input factors for budgeting and allocating public funds for higher education. During the past years, budgetary allocation to higher education institutions for recurrent expenditure has fallen short of the norm-based costs. Indeed, the difference between the norm-based costs of university education and resources made available to the institutions by the Government was 28.9% in 2005/06 and 23.4% in 2009/10. It was also argued that the bases for funding tertiary education were not planned outputs of tertiary education. The fund allocation model was not programme-linked as initially thought. The consequence of the inability of the state to provide funds to meet the norm-based costs of higher education is the breakdown of norm-based budgeting, which was instituted in the early 1990s and a reversion to incremental and ad-hoc budgeting without due regard the volume of activities performed by the institutions. it is proposed that the Government of Ghana acting in concert with the National Council for Tertiary Education and tertiary institutions should regularly assess the developments in the tertiary education system and determine mission and purposes of tertiary education in Ghana as the basis for allocating public funds tertiary education institutions. The afore-made recommendations impose responsibilities on the Ministry of Education, the National Council for Tertiary Education and tertiary education institutions. This development has had grave consequences for higher education equity and efficiency in fund management.

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