The Hindu Business Line : Paperless environment poses audit challenges

The paperless environment, being ushered in the foreign trade-related government departments as part of the electronic data interchange (EDI) system, has brought to the fore certain audit challenges, say exporters.

The exporting community apprehends that many of the payments received by them from the Revenue Department under various export promotion schemes may run into trouble if the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) were to raise audit queries after a long gap of time.

While the Director-General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), Mr K.T. Chacko, is keen to ensure that hard copies (paper records) are not maintained by the offices in the EDI system, exporters say that the Government departments do not generally destroy files until they have been audited.

The main issue here is that CAG does not undertake concurrent audits of the revenue department and there is usually a lag before the audit of the revenue department is taken up and completed.

To ensure that claims do not fall on them after a gap of time, the exporting community wants the Commerce Ministry to sort out this thorny issue with the CAG before insisting on a total paperless regime.

Mr Chacko assured the exporters recently that he would convince the CAG to change its audit mechanisms under the EDI regime.

"I am going to have a meeting with the CAG. We don't want hard copies to be maintained under the EDI regime. The answer to this is a change in the audit pattern," Mr Chacko said.

Currently, the EDI system is in place in 32 customs ports of the country and 34 offices of the DGFT. There is no physical movement of documents between the customs and the DGFT offices under the EDI system. However, in non-EDI ports the physical documents are still being used.

Related Stories:
Fast-track EDI implementation

More Stories on : Auditing | E-Governance | Exports & Imports

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Jury still out on foreigners heading telecom operations

Paperless environment poses audit challenges

Market players see red in fluctuations of agri-commodities

MFs witness Rs 23,542-cr outflows in Sept

Merger is an option in Tata Steel-Corus talks

Infosys Q2 net surges 52 pc

Auto parts makers seek zero duty on raw material

Infosys set to cross $3-b mark in a year

Heading for blockbuster year

CIBIL plans products to spot good customers

Construction cos under cost pressure?

Aviation sector on `cautious' radar

Gulf investors eyeing Shariat-compliant stocks

SEBI announces uniform cut-off timings to calculate MFs' NAV