ICAI to establish Excellence centers: Sunil Talati

Bangalore, May 25: The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has planned to establish over 17 Centres of Excellence across the country, its president Mr Sunil Talati informed here today.

Speaking after inaugurating the 2-day National Conference for IT Industry organised by the Committee for Members of Industry (CMI) here today Mr Talati has said the first centre woulf come up at Hyderabad by January 2008.

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

Mr Talati said that the IIM's and IIT's have such centres across the nation and ICAI was now following them. ICAI was also in the process of finalising the necessary curriculum to be introduced in these Centres of Excellence. ''After Hyderabad the next centres will come up at Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Mumbai'' he said.

He also said 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. The Core Group had been given four to five years to complete the process.

He also informed that the Compulsory Professional examination(CPE) programme was made mandatory for the members of the fraternity with an intention to keep them abreast of the latest developments happening in the field of accounts including change of Taxation laws, accounting procedures.

Mr Talati said that over 50 per cent of the newly graduated Chartered Accountants prefer employment and their preferred destination was IT industry. He said that Country needed over 55000 fresh Chartered Accountants by 2010 and only 10,000 CA's were passing out annually and there wouldbe a big gap to fill.

UNI