Panel studies outcome budget

NOTEPAD

A committee under the chairmanship of former Union minister Suresh Prabhu has been set up by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) through the ICAI Accounting Research Foundation (ARF) to strengthen the system of outcome budget.

The committee has participation from experts from organisations including the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and National Council of Applied Economic Research, select CMDs of Public Sector Undertakings, and chartered accountants.

The committee has undertaken various case studies to form a conceptual framework for the outcome budget. The committee was constituted following the finance minister's emphasis on outcome budget and its intended objectives.

Now, CAs can train more articled clerks

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has raised the entitlement of training articled assistants. This means that the number of students for articleship training under a practising Chartered Accountant (CA) will now be increased. With almost 70 per cent of the chartered accountants going to the industry, the articles were facing a crunch in terms of trainers. The ICAI took this decision to tackle the problem and make the administration more effective.

For instance, an associate or fellow in continuous practice for any period from 5 to 10 years is now entitled to train five articled clerks as against three under the earlier provision.

Similarly, for a practising CA with a period of 10 years and above, the entitlement is now 10 articled clerks. However, there has been no change in the entitlement to CAs with a practice of up to three or five years, where the number remains one and two, respectively.

Another important change brought by the ICAI is that the full-time salaried employees in CA firms can also train articled clerks. They were earlier not eligible to train. For up to 100 salaried employees, the entitled number is one articled assistant per employee.

Similarly, when the number of employees is between 101 to 500, the number of articled assistants can go up to a maximum of 300. The ICAI has also decided that the total number of articled assistants to be engaged by the full-time salaried employees shall not exceed the entitlement of the CA in practice or of all partners taken together of a firm of CAs.

Two new standards on internal audit

The ICAI has approved two new standards on internal audit "" Basic Principles of Internal Audit and Documentation in Internal Audit "" to help its members in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the internal audit work performed by them and ready them for global acceptability.

The standard on Documentation in Internal Audit deals with some of the fundamental issues including what constitutes internal documentation, form and content of internal audit documentation, factors affecting form and content, essential features of a working paper, aspects relating to file assembly and subsequent modification to the internal audit documentation and documentation retention and access.

The standard on Basic Principles deals with the fundamental postulates of internal audit viz. integrity, objectivity and independence of internal auditor, confidentiality, docum-entation, planning and work performed by others.