Home ›› 06 Jan 2023 ›› Front
With a view to making the financial reports of corporates transparent and accurate and chartered accountants accountable as well as popularising the profession among the new generation, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) will announce a 50-year action plan today.
On the occasion of its golden jubilee, the ICAB has drawn up elaborate programmes, including seminars and roundtable discussions.
The mega plan includes improving the quality of auditing, making CA profession lucrative, updating the curriculum, enhancing the capability of firms and stepping up monitoring on firms.
The move is aimed at making financial reports of companies more accurate and making CA and firms responsible in case of any flaws.
The leaders of ICAB said that in the last 50 years, ICAB has gone a long way with ensuring accuracy and fairness in the financial sector. The next 50-year plan will be more realistic that will ultimately help the country ensure transparency in the financial sector and make CA profession more popular.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh was established in line with Bangladesh Chartered Accountants Order, 1973 (President’s Order No. 2 of 1973) under visionary leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
While talking to The Business Post, ICAB president Md Moniruzzaman said that Bangladesh is now an emerging economy in the world that has witnessed a robust growth over the years.
The country needs skilled manpower to keep pace with the development, he added.
“The CAs have made a significant contribution to the country’s economy with financial reporting and auditing. ICAB will draw up a 50-year action plan to make the CA profession more effective for the economy,” he said.
ICAB executive committee member Md Humayun Kabir said that Bangladesh will graduate from LDC status by 2026 when everything will be more competitive. “This is why we have to be more realistic and market-oriented to win over the competition.”
“Marking the golden jubilee of ICAB, we will focus on enhancing the capability of firms and making the profession more dignified. Besides, we will focus highly on implementing the code of ethics of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) strictly and making the curriculum more updated,” he added.
Achievements
In the last 50 years of its journey, ICAB has made remarkable achievements in developing infrastructure, designing world standard curriculum, making CA education decentralized and setting up different CA firms across the country.
Over the last 50 years, ICAB has produced 2,500 chartered accountants (CAs) for Bangladesh. Currently, there are some 200 CA firms to accelerate financial auditing. Besides, ICAB has signed MoUs with 13 universities in recent years to give the profession a boost.
With the expansion of the economy and boom in the corporate sector, the services of certified chartered accountants (CAs) are now on high demand in Bangladesh. As a result, a growing number of students are now choosing CA as a profession and the number of articled students is gradually increasing along with the pass rate.
In 2020, ICAB saw 1,155 articled students and 1,198 in 2021. And in 2022, ICAB witnessed a record number of 2,000 articled students.
Humayun Kabir said that the achievements of ICAB are now visible with the progress of the nation. The CAs are adding value to the economy.
“There are high demand for CAs even in the global market as the curriculum is world standard. Our training and examinations are well accepted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales,” he added.
Long way to go
Despite having high demand of CAs in the market, Bangladesh still lags behind many developed countries in producing CAs to cope up with the expansion of the economy.
Due to several challenges during the learning period and a lack of positive branding and awareness among the candidates, the students don’t want to become CA. Consequently, Bangladesh has to hire a significant number of CAs from the global market, including India and Sri Lanka. Besides, there is allegation that most of the audit reports are verified by several firms.
In a notice issued on September 22, the Financial Reporting Council, Bangladesh said, “A total of 41,082 financial reports were verified by 400 professional chartered accountants. Of them, 17,041 financial reports were verified by 50 professional accountants, which is practically abnormal.”
Moniruzzaman said that those who are involved with unethical practices will be removed soon as they introduced a document verification system (DVS). The DVS will boost revenue as no firms can make different audit reports anyway.
He said DVS is well accepted by the regulator and financial institutions, including banks, and corporate houses as the organisations which have access to the DVS server will be able to find out which auditors have signed in and it will enhance the credibility of auditors.
