Call for accounting committee for government

There should be a system for recording the government expenditure, and an accounting committee should be set up for this purpose, according to K Rahman Khan, deputy chairman, Rajya Sabha.

Speaking at the fourth international conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) in Chennai on Thursday, he said that the expenditure by government was the most neglected section in terms of accounting.

"The government expenditure is roughly Rs 1 million crore per year. Most of the bills on expenditure are passed in the Parliament in a matter of just 2-3 minutes. On a rough estimate, around 25-30 per cent of the government expenditure is wasted in the form of cost escalations, corruption and faulty reporting system," he said.

"There is no system for recording the government expenditure and the Parliament does not receive any feedback on this. The accounting professionals should guide the government in setting up a transparent accounting committee. The accountants can also make use of the Right to Information (RTI) Act to correct the system," he added.

"The gross domestic product of India is $880 billion now, and is expected to increase to $2-2.5 trillion in the next ten years. At present, there are only 1, 30,000 chartered accountants in India, which would be insufficient in facing the challenges of an era of globalization and liberalization. The accounting bodies need to address this problem by producing more accounting professionals," Rahman said.