After a long wait, the decks have been cleared for the national rollout of accrual accounting in Railways. The CA Institute’s Accounting Research Foundation (ARF) has signed an agreement with Railways for this purpose.

It may be recalled that the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had in this year’s budget speech announced that as part of accounting reforms, accrual based financial statements will be rolled out in Railways by March 2019.

Now, the agreement signed by ARF with Railways will seek to introduce accrual accounting at 17 Railway zones and 8 production units across the country, sources said. The agreement will be valid for 18 months.

The agreement was signed by V. Sagar, Director, ICAI ARF and Secretary, ICAI and Sanjeev Sharma, Deputy Chief Project Manager (Accounting Reforms), Northern Railway in the presence of Shahzad Shah, Financial Commissioner, Indian Railways and Nilesh Shivji Vikamsey, Chairman, ICAI ARF and President, ICAI.

The interesting aspect is that accrual based financial statements will serve as an additional set of accounts to existing cash based accounting.

Accrual based financial statement will support Indian Railways in better utilisation of available resources, estimation of future liabilities and prioritisation of spending. It will also pave way for best financial management practices to be introduced in Indian Railways.

This agreement follows implementation of the pilot project for introduction of the Accrual based Financial Statement as an additional set of Accounts at North Western Railway at Jaipur and Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala by ICAI ARF.

The CA Institute’s ARF will not be implementing this on a pro-bono basis, sources said.

srivats.kr@thehindu.co.in

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