Hyderabad, February 17th 2016: CA. M. Devaraja Reddy, President, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), interacted with the media on the initiatives being undertaken by ICAI at a Press conference on Wednesday at ICAI Bhawan, Hyderabad.
CA. Devaraja Reddy was elected as the President of ICAI on February 12, 2016, for the year 2016-17. He is the first president of ICAI hailing from the two Telugu states. CA. Raghunandan V, Chairman, Hyderabad Branch, SIRC, ICAI and CA. Adusumalli Venkateswara Rao were present on the occasion.
Speaking to media CA. Devaraja Reddy said, this is the first time in the 64 years history of ICAI, that someone from the two Telugu states has been elected as the president. The institute currently has 2.4 lakh members off which 90,000 are independent CA practitioners, 1.2 lakhs with corporates and around 30,000 working abroad. We have revamped the syllabus for CA exam, by incorporating the latest, borrowing curriculum from of similar courses from abroad and removing redundant subjects. The new syllabus has been approved by the Ministry, currently being vetted from legal perspective, post which we will seek public comments for 45 days and then introduce it either by November 2016 or May 2017.
To filter non-serious students we are bringing in more reforms. The new eligibility exam will be 12th standard. The examination will be of 400 marks instead of the current 200 marks, and divided as 200 for subjective and 200 marks through objective type questions. Our CAs are competing internationally as our standards are high and communication skills are excellent. We have 153 branches in India and 27 chapters across the world. We are opening more braches at places where we have 100 members. We have 2 branches in Warangal and one in Karimnagar besides the Center of Excellence at Hyderabad.
In Andhra we started branches in Eluru, Tirupati, Kurnool, Ongole, Anantapur. We need land of 2 acres to construct our buildings in all these cities besides Guntur and Vijayawada, we will pay government land rate and will spend Rs 3 crores into each of these. If Government gives us 5 acres land in Amaravati, we can set up a Center of Excellence. We appeal to both the CMs to help us in getting land in all these cities at Government rate.
The services of CAs are being utilized to the potential by private sector but Government is not utilizing our services properly. There is resistance from officials in the Government, they follow single accounting system and don’t want double accounting, which has several advantages. Railways has given a pilot project in Ajmer division, on successfully implementing it we could have a role in Railways.
There are 600 districts in the country, to control their expenses auditing is essential, it can streamline the spending, there by bring transparency and better results from the expenditure of various schemes of state and central governments. We will have a greater role with the advent of GST and even for loans offered by World Bank CA certification is necessary. To avoid Satyam like incidents we have been advising our members to be alert and not to fall prey to some greedy people.
The Government had dispensed with the system of RBI designating CAs for banks some seven years back. Now the Banks themselves decide on the CAs for auditing and often they settle for those who suit their style, there by proper auditing may not be happening, NPAs may not be disclosed to show higher profitability. Earlier ICAI used to classify the CA firms and RBI used to designate such auditors for banks. Such independent auditors could put a check on NPAs. Also banks are getting only 20% of their branches audited, if every branch is audited than there could be control on loan disbursement. Lack of proper auditing is one of the reasons for the rising NPA and could bring down NPAs by 20 to 30% by independent auditing. We have been representing to RBI about this for the last 4 years, they say the finance ministry has to take a decision. We have sought an appointment with the Finance minister on February 22nd, 2016 and will convey our position to him.
