The Hindu Business Line : Company secretaries not lured by the call of IT

Bangalore, Dec. 13 Company Secretaries have shown stronger bondage to their avocation with the stream of study for students after school showing an upward swing of 20 per cent in the last two years after a brief decline in 2004. Unlike other professions, it has seen less migration to the irrepressible ITeS services.

There was no demand-supply mismatch and with the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) stepping up its efforts to take the discipline to the smaller towns through the online medium, corporates would not feel the pangs of shortage felt by the manufacturing sector.

Announcing a two-day national conference of practicing company secretaries here on December 14 and 15, Mr N.K. Jain, Secretary & CEO, ICSI, said that the demand for company secretaries would be met with stepped efforts through the e-learning portal launched recently.

Membership

He said ICSI expects its membership to reach 50,000 by 2015 from the current 21,000. This he said would be due to various initiatives taken by ICSI in the field of education standards, means of reaching it to smaller cities to motivate youth to adopt the profession, and effecting changes in practices and standards of company secretaries keeping in tune with the latest developments in the world economy.

Among several steps that has changed the professional standards, the recommendatory standards set out by ICSI have reshaped the governance of the corporates to be on par with global corporations, Mr Jain said, adding that ICSI was planning to make the standards relating to holding of board meetings, dividend payments, and share transfers, to be part of the new company law being debated in the country.

Clarity call

“The secretarial standards aim at bringing more clarity in certain areas where the law is either silent or ambiguous,” said Mr Jain.

In another significant step of globalising the profession, ICSI will be seeking the Government’s help for the inclusion of a new chapter for Corporate Governance and Company Secretarial Services under the Services Sectoral Classification list of the World Trade Organisation.

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