For improving the quality of financial reporting and auditing in the country further, stakeholders should contribute independently through maintaining integrity and professionalism, speakers at a virtual conference said on Saturday.
Management of company, audit committee, internal and external auditors and the regulators require to perform their own responsibilities properly in this direction, speakers observed.
The virtual conference was organised by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh-ICAB on Dynamics of Audit Quality in Bangladesh.
Prof Dr Md Salim Uddin FCA, Council Member of ICAB and Professor, Department of Accounting, University of Chattogram presented the keynote paper of the conference while ICAB President Mahmudul Hasan Khusru FCA delivered an address of welcome.
Dewan Nurul Islam FCA, Chairman of the Investigation and Disciplinary Committee (IDC) and Past President-ICAB conducted the conference as the Session Chairman. As panel speakers Muhammad Farooq FCA, Member Council and Immediate Past President ICAB; and Md Abdul Kader Joaddar FCA, Vice President-ICAB took part in the conference.
ICAB President Mahmudul Hasan Khusru FCA said, the most important thing for audit profession is the quality of audit. There is no way for auditors to compromise the quality, he said.
ICAB has strengthened its monitoring activities which include deploying dedicated employees, developing and updating frameworks, checklist and automation, he further said.
It also introduced an integrated audit software for improving the quality of audit, he added.
Keynote presenter Dr Md. Salim Uddin FCA said, following high-profile corporate scandals, and the recent financial crisis, audit quality has become one of the top-priority issues for regulators, standard setters, researchers and practitioners.
In the keynote paper, it was revealed that from the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies And Firms (RJSC), a total of 1.76 lakh public and private limited companies obtained registration till July 2020 and more than 88 per cent or around 1.55 lakh business firms are active.
The keynote presenter also informed that among 1.55 lakh companies, only 78,000 companies obtained taxpayers identification numbers and on average 35,000 TIN holding companies submit income tax returns whereas ICAB registered auditors perform audit for only seventeen thousand companies in a year.
To eliminate such malpractice ICAB developed an automated document verification system (DVS) to authenticate audited financial statements and find out unscrupulous business entities that used doctored reports to evade corporate tax, the keynote presenter said.
