Newly elected President and Vice-President of The Institute of Cost Accountants of India for the year 2021-22
Hyderabad, 17th December 2021: The newly elected President CMA P.Raju Iyer and Vice President CMA Vijender Sharma of the Institute of Cost Accountants of India for the year 2021-22 on 28th November, 2021, based out of New Delhi; briefed media on ICAI initiatives to help India accomplish the goal of USD 5 Trillion Economy by 2025, today at CMA Bhavan, Himayatnagar. Also present on the occasion were CMA Dr K. CH. AVSN Murthy, Central Council Member, ICAI; CMA Chandra Sekhara Reddy Punugoti, Chairman, ICAI – Hyderabad Chapter and CMA K. Someswara Babu, Secretary, ICAI – Hyderabad Chapter.
Speaking on the occasion CMA P.Raju Iyer said, we are setting up a state-of-the-art Center of Excellence in the Financial District in Hyderabad, which will have modern class rooms with hi-tech facilities. We have launched several courses which are need of the hour. One of the Diploma courses is in Data analytics which is today very much required for the budding cost accountants to get into business and proficiently do analytical work, another diploma course is on Artificial Intelligence, another course is related to insurance management and risk based internal auditing. There is a total transformation in Auditing in the past decade. We are functioning as the largest body in Asia and the second largest body in the world, to become the first largest body in the world we want to be globalized and, in that direction, we are entering into MoUs and agreements with various countries where our courses of Cost and Management Accounting (CMA) will be launched, where we will have students from all over the world. As a first step we are conducting online examinations, a first in India by our institute along with other professional institutes. Last December we conducted and exam and again this December we are conducting the exam. The first phase of the examination is over, and it was conducted successfully. We will continue these online exams so that foreign students will be able to write the exams and our members and students working abroad will also be in a position to write the exam in the respective places. That gives a huge boost and will enable us to be number one Institute with highest membership in the World. The Auditing arena is totally changed, now there is no voucher, there is a physical verification, the whole accounting perspective itself is changing. If you take ten or twenty years before, people were maintaining in the books they will be making an entry. Today what is happening is when purchase order is made entry is made in required forms and it is automatically updated. To do our bit towards our Central Government’s aim of USD 5 Trillion Economy by 2025, we formed a special taskforce on MSME and Start Ups where our members will be in a position to guide, our technical experts will guide the MSMEs to have the sustainable growth and how they will be able to progress well and their products will be export oriented and where we will be able to make lot of progress which ensures to easily achieve USD 5 Trillion Economy. The other aspect we are focusing on is Atmanirbhar Bharat, to have local products and have local material effectively, certainly we can effectively enforce those kinds of guidelines. Our immediate target is to have in place risk based internal auditing and we are bringing a comprehensive guidance note on risk based internal auditing and industry specific guidance on how internal auditing to be done and how performance can be improved by the performance audit. To augment farmer’s income, we formed a task force on Agriculture which we made as a Board of Agriculture, where we are launching two separate courses through an agreement with IGNOU university.
CMA Vijender Sharma said, in the past we used to export raw material and import finished products, today the new government is laying emphasis on Atmanirbhar Bharat. Today the whole world has become a Global village, which means we have entered a virtual competition. To achieve the target of Atmanirbhar Bharat, our manufacturing company or service provider should produce their product at an economical price and the quality should be on par with the global competition, that’s when we can make Atmanirbhar Bharat. When we go for financial accounting, we all know how much profit is being generated, that is historical, but during a particular period how much profit how much loss we have calculated and how much Income tax and other tax we need to pay to the Government is needed. What is the future of the company, it has to be ensured that the company decides on it. It is important for India to become a force competitor from global perspective. Making our production cost competitive is the job of Management Costing, the company Board should know how much profit or income they generated during the last year, it is more important to know their future, the age of his product, how we can have sustainable growth in future, these are the outcome of cost and management accounting.
CMA P. Raju Iyer is a Fellow Member of the how much profit Institute of Cost Accountants of India. He has a rich experience over a period of 4 decades with increasing and progressive responsibilities covering the areas of organizational development, wealth creation & value addition process to the profession. He was elected as a member to Central Council of the Institute for the term 2015-19 and re-elected for the term 2019-23. He has served as Vice President of the Institute (2020-21).
CMA Vijender Sharma is a Fellow Member of The Institute of Cost Accountants of India and a Law Graduate. He is a leading practicing Cost Accountant since 1998 and Insolvency Professional since Jan’ 2017. His dynamism is embedded with rich experience of over 22 years in diversified areas of Financial, Cost and Management Accounting, Internal Audit, Management Consultancy, Forensic Audit, Insolvency and Liquidation, etc. He was elected as a member to Central Council of the Institute for the term 2015-19 and re-elected for the term 2019-23.
About the Institute: The Institute of Cost Accountants of India (erstwhile The Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India) was first formed in 1944 as a registered company under the Companies Act with the objects of promoting, regulating, and developing the profession of Cost Accountancy. On 28th May 1959, the Institute was established by a special Act of Parliament, namely, the Cost and Works Accountants Act, 1959 as a statutory professional body for the regulation of the profession of Cost and Management accountancy. The Institute is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India.
The Institute is headquartered in Kolkata having four Regional Councils at Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai, 113 Chapters in India and 11 Overseas Centers. The Institute is the 2nd largest Cost & Management Accounting body in the World and the largest in Asia, having approximately 5,00,000 students and 85,000 qualified CMAs either in practice or in employment all over the globe. The Institute is a founder member of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), Confederation of Asian and Pacific Accountants (CAPA) and South Asian Federation of Accountants (SAFA). The Institute is also a member of International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC), UK and International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), UK.
The Institute as a part of its obligation regulates the profession of Cost and Management Accountancy. The Institute also pursues the vision of cost competitiveness, cost management, efficient use of resources and structured approach to cost accounting as the key drivers of the profession. Since last 77 years, the CMA profession has strived relentlessly to promote the socio-economic development of the country. The CMAs are considered to be the powerhouse in the Indian economy as they are trained to be cost competitive, utilize available resources in an efficient and cost-effective manner through cost optimization, efficient deployment of scarce resources leading to cost control, cost reduction and cost consciousness.
Over the years, the role of Cost & Management Accountants (CMAs) has undergone complete transformation. In business activities and operations, CMAs play very important and decisive role enabling the managements to take effective decisions & suggest the corporate favoured policies & schemes. CMAs assist the organizations to accomplish its objectives; to evaluate and improve the adequacy & effectiveness of its operations, internal controls, governance processes, and the risk management & control systems. This in-turn helps these entities to improve their performance, efficiency, productivity, profitability, and sustainability.
Being the second largest global body, our Institute, has been in the forefront, in developing competent cost and management accounting professionals, who play a key role in helping the business entities achieve cost competitiveness, through well-defined cost management systems to monitor and improve the cost efficiencies both in manufacturing and service sectors. The CMAs provide highly valuable support to the policy makers and business entities in devising cost effective business models with life cycle advantages for all sectors of economy to improve their performance, ensure sustainability, and enhance effective utilization of resources deployed by them.
In the Covid-19 pandemic period, the Institute developed two very important & most demanding documents that would certainly help in proper Board-level monitoring & evaluation and in preparing right Business Continuity Plans post lockdowns. These are, “Conceptual Approach to Board Reporting Framework – A Post Covid-19 Corporate Governance Perspective” and “Post Covid-19 & Lockdown – Technical Guide on Business Continuity Plan.”
We have also recently developed Activity based Performance Costing System that would assist the organizations to correctly & timely measure and assess the performance of different activities or operations. This system will also help Indian Businesses to arrive at appropriate product-mix and pricing decisions; to identify profitable, loss making and non-value-added products/activities; and to control and improve the business planning, budgeting, resource allocation, resource utilization, and investment decisions.
Today, the CMAs solely focus on the PM’s vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat who are propelled to play more effective role in supporting the Government’s initiatives with an aim to help India to become cost competitive, capture export market, catalyze wider employment generation and GDP growth, much needed to achieve the PM’s goal of USD 5 Trillion Economy by 2025. CMAs churn the best practices successfully adopted in different industries/business entities. Deliberations on disruptive ideas and blue ocean business strategies coupled with IT driven tools, artificial intelligence & analytical skills lay a road map to gear-up the economic revival cycle in a high trajectory mode much needed to make India a place of pride once again.
