ICAI to establish 17 Excellence Centres: Sunil Talati

Bangalore, May 25 (UNI) Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) President Sunil Talati today said it has planned to establish over 17 Centres of Excellence across the country.

Inaugurating the two-day National Conference for IT Industry, organised by the Committee for Members of Industry (CMI) here, he said the first centre would come up in Hyderabad by January 2008.

''After Hyderabad, the next centres would come up in Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Mumbai,'' he added.

He said the Rs 250 crore project intended to fine tune both the members of the ICAI and the young Chartered Accountants to improve their skillsets, articulation and presentation methods. The centre would offer a six months course before a budding CA plunged into practice.

Mr Talati said the IIMs and IITs have such centres across the nation and ICAI was following them. ICAI was also in the process of finalising the necessary curriculum to be introduced in these Centres of Excellence.

The ICAI had constituted a Special Core Group at the national level to revise the traditional Indian Accounting standards and make them on par with the International Accounting standards and Global Auditing standards, he said, adding that the Core Group had been given four to five years to complete the process.

Mr Talati informed that the Compulsory Professional Examination (CPE) programme was made mandatory for the members of the fraternity with an intention to keep them abreast with the latest developments in the field of accounts, including change of taxation laws and accounting procedures.

He said over 50 per cent of the newly graduated Chartered Accountants prefer employment and their preferred destination was IT industry. The country needed over 55,000 fresh Chartered Accountants by 2010, but only 10,000 CAs were passing out annually.

UNI