ICAI gears up for intl accounting standards

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), which has announced that the Indian accounting standards will be converged with International Financial Reporting (IFR) accounting standards from the financial year 2011-2012 onwards, is already gearing up for the challenge.

Ruling out any possibilities of complications arising out of the convergence, Ved Jain, vice-president, ICAI, said, "Indian accounting standards are already on the lines of IFR standards and will require very minor changes. It will nowhere affect the performances of the companies or make them incur losses. The standards are different only to the extent of centigrade and Fahrenheit."

The institute is already training CA professionals across the country in this regard. The US too has agreed to adopt the IFR.

Apart from the US GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) being converged with the international standard, over 100 countries have already adopted the IFR.

"With globalisation at its peak, there had been a huge demand since long across the world for common accounting standards. Unlike India, several countries had some differences in adopting the common international accounting standard of IFR given the amount of changes required in their current standards," he said.

The common accounting standards has benefited several multinational companies, who until now had to publish and submit different set of accounts in the countries of their operations.

The Supreme Court recently upheld the revised accounting standards, AS 22, issued by ICAI, made mandatory for all listed companies since financial year 2001-02.