The Impact of Internal Audit Quality on Audit Delay (Audit Report Lag):With Practical Study on The Egyptian Auditing Professional Environment

In an attempt to develop the Egyptian capital market and in light of the development witnessed by the Egyptian economy in all fields, the Capital Market Authority stressed the shareholding companies registered with them the need to provide the necessary information to shareholders and investors in a clear and misleading and in a timely manner.
This is confirmed by the American Accounting Standards Board (FASB, 2010: 1) that the main objective of financial reporting is to provide information to users and stakeholders in companies that help them in making decisions, to be published in a timely manner, before losing that appropriate information In the field of decision-making as one of the descriptive characteristics of accounting information.
The report issued by the External Auditor is a communication tool that gives more confidence to the audited financial statements, so that the stakeholders in the company can rely on them in making many decisions related to them. The External Auditor expresses his opinion on the sincerity and fairness of the presentation of the financial statements of the company. This is an instrument for judging the fairness and fairness of the presentation of the financial statements. This role is so important that the financial statements are considered a common product of management and the external auditor.
However, the delay in the issuance of the audit report (the time between the end of the company's fiscal year and the date of the audit report) affects the appropriateness of information in decision-making because it is not available in a timely manner, reducing the usefulness of information to decision-makers. For companies, the flow of information to the market is slow, and it is open to leaking information about the company's performance, which may affect the extent to which some benefit from that information at the expense of the other.
Recently, there have been many studies that dealt with the determinants and reasons for the period of the External Auditor's report, some of which examined and analyzed the impact of the quality of internal audit activity on the timing of the issuance of the external audit report. The academic and professional activities of the internal audit activity, including the study of the nature of the relationship between the quality of internal audit activity and the period of issuance of the report of the external auditor.