ICSI talks of corporate governance

The Institute of Company Secretary of India (ICSI) has roped in neighbouring countries besides Singapore, Malaysia and Kenya, to push for the inclusion of corporate governance services and secretarial advisory services as separate entries under services in World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations.

The inclusion of these distinct services would allow multilateral exchange of the said services, compared to the memorandum route that was being currently adopted.

While this would open the Indian Company Secretaries to global competition in services except certification work, it would also open up many opportunities for Indian professionals, who are already in great demand in various developed countries for their expertise and relatively low cost.

"UK was expected to join the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA) in October and pass a resolution to this effect," Naresh Kumar Jain, secretary, ICSI, who had a meeting with ICSA recently, said, "Once ICSA was in, its sister institutes in Canada, Hong Kong, South Africa and Sri Lanka among others would also become a part of the pressure group."

While accounting and legal profession was covered under separate entries for accounting, book keeping and legal services, there was no specific entry for services offered by Chartered Secretaries.

"Owing to the lack of a focused group of nations for the profession of Chartered Secretaries, there was no clear entry for services offered. That meant we would continue on the memorandum route for expanding into various countries. A multilateral framework would allow the profession to grow far more rapidly," Jain said.

Out of the 148 member countries, 56 had so far given commitments in accounting, auditing and book keeping services, which meant non-commitments for 60 per cent of the countries. While ICSI's initiative was just taking off it, for the institute it was atleast two-three years of work before any concrete benefits was achieved.

ICSI's move becomes important as the real difficulty in movement of professionals lies in the recognition of the professional qualifications. Recognition of qualification has therefore become a cornerstone for rapid growth for professionals.

While there has been not much movement on this front in the GATS talk, another problem is the lack of data to facilitate analysis and consider requests made for inclusion of services. ICSI has done a detailed study and circulated the same to various countries.