On reciprocity. CA Institute open to allow UK, Canadian professionals provide audit services in India

The CA Institute is now open to offer market access in auditing services to audit and accounting professionals from the UK and Canada. 

The Central Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has at its recent meeting approved a draft market access offer from India in the ongoing negotiations on trade in services with its FTA partners — the UK and Canada, Debashis Mitra, President, ICAI told BusinessLine.

“We have decided to go for UK and Canada. We can try to open up audit services for these two so long as certain conditions are met. It will be on a reciprocal basis. If your people come, we should be allowed to go there. It cannot be one way. Visa and all other facilities have to be provided for all our chartered accountants if they want to work in UK and Canada”, Mitra said. 

There is already an existing mutual recognition agreement (MRA) of the qualifications with both these countries, he said. 

For both the UK and Canada, the bone of contention was audit services. Already book keeping and other services are opened up.

Indications are that the approved draft offer will be forwarded by the CA Institute to the Commerce Ministry for further action and FTA negotiations.

Going by the draft offer as approved by theCouncil, it is implicit that in the case of UK, only members of ICAEW (with whom ICAI currently has MRA with) who are registered with the Financial Reporting Council are eligible for audit practice rights after fulfilling certain conditions.

Similarly, in the case of draft offer for Canada, it is implicit that only members of CPA Canada (with whom ICAI currently has a MRA with) who are registered with Canadian Public Accountability Board are eligible for audit practice rights  under the offer after fulfilling certain conditions.

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