The Ministry of Corporate Affairs saw three ministers at the helm in the year 2011. Mr Salman Khurshid was followed by Mr Murli Deora, who presided for a brief while, before resigning and making way for former Law Minister, Mr Veerappa Moily.
That could be the reason why the MCA missed the bus on its biggest target for the year — the new Companies Bill, 2011.
The new, revamped Companies Bill was expected to replace a 56-year-old Act this year, but it was not to be. Ministry officials, though, claim it would be wrong to say that it did not make any progress at all.
The Bill in its new avatar was presented to the Lok Sabha on December 14, but had to be sent back to the Standing Committee on Finance and is now expected to be taken up in the Budget session next year.
The long-awaited Bill proposes significant changes to the existing corporate laws and aims to improve corporate governance. Some of the topics that have been vetted are corporate social responsibility, the role and responsibility of independent directors, norms for disclosure and private placement for companies.
The Government had promised at the G20 in September 2009 that India would converge its Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) with the internationally accepted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The convergence of Indian Accounting Standards, called Indian AS's, with IFRS was approved by the Ministry in February 2011 but the date of enforcement is yet to be notified.
According to the Ministry, the year saw increased regulatory compliance by companies with the filing of nine lakh balance sheets and annual returns on its portal MCA21 in October as compared to 7.6 lakh filings during the same month the previous year.
As far as the Extensible Business Reporting Language-based electronic reporting is concerned, 9,000 companies have filed their XBRL documents.
The Limited Liability Partnership e-Governance Programme is to be brought on the same platform as the MCA21 for better governance. Tata Consultancy Services is expected to develop the software by end-January 2011.
The Company Law Settlement Scheme was introduced in August to allow companies to complete their balance sheet and annual return filings. Around 1.25 lakh documents have been filed so far, yielding a revenue of Rs 15.37 crore.
The Ministry also introduced new schemes such as the Easy Exit Scheme and allowed the filing of all documents online in its green drive.
The year 2012 should be exciting for the Ministry with two major Acts set to see the light of day. Along with the Companies Act, the Competition Act is also in the works, expected to be notified in March. It proposes giving statutory powers to the Competition Commission of India.