The Hindu Business Line : Accountancy institutes await Bills to set up multi-disciplinary firms

Though the Councils of the Chartered Accountants (CA) and Cost & Work Accountants (C&WA) institutes seem to agree on the concept of multi-disciplinary firms, they have to wait for suitable amendments in the Acts governing their professions, sources pointed out.

While the Council of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) has given its `in principle' nod to allow its members in practice to strike partnerships with other professionals such as CAs and cost accountants, the legislations governing the chartered accountancy and cost accountancy profession need an amendment to facilitate such an arrangement.

The amendments to the three professional Bills — chartered accountants, company secretaries and cost & work accountants — now stands referred to a Group of Ministers (GoM).

With growing preference among the companies for `one-stop shop' or `multi-disciplinary firms', the pressure seems to be increasing on the respective professions to strengthen their collective competencies by establishing synergistic relationships.

The professional institutes were expecting the enabling provision for multi-disciplinary firms to come through once the Bills bringing in amendments to their Acts were passed. However, now with the fate of the Bills lying in the hands of the Group of Ministers, it may take a while before the CA and C&WA institutes can proceed any further on the issue, sources said.

The Bills to fine tune the three professional Acts were introduced in 2003. Subsequently, these were referred to the Standing Committee on Finance on August 24, 2004. The committee had proposed certain amendments to the Bills.

However, at a recent Cabinet meeting certain doubts were raised on some provisions of the Bills and it was felt that more deliberations were required. Therefore, the Cabinet referred it to GoM comprising the Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil; the Finance Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram; the Law Minister, Mr H.R. Bhardwaj; the Commerce Minister, Mr Kamal Nath; the Industry Minister, Santosh Mohan Dev; and the Company Affairs Minister, Mr Prem Chand Gupta.

The three institutes on their part have already set up a coordination committee with representatives from each to work on the issues regarding exclusive areas of practice, training of trainees, name of the firm, disciplinary mechanism, and reciprocal arrangements, when the firms come into existence.

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