The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the largest body of accountants in the world, seems well set to take India’s technological skills, domain knowledge and technology adoption experience outside India. As a starter, ICAI will be organising and participating in a workshop and conference on how AI and other emerging technologies can be adopted in the accounting profession, in San Francisco (the US) sometime soon. The same model may be replicated elsewhere also.

ICAI is also working in a concerted way with the Comptroller & Auditor General and other concerned authorities to spread financial and tax literacy across the country. At present, financial and tax literacy rate is estimated to be 23 per cent and moves are now afoot to take this up to 87 per cent. Then only India will get the desired level, said Ranjeet Kumar Agarwal, president, ICAI. The institute is offering a specially designed course in as many as 12 regional languages for students who pass out 12th standard, Agarwal said. This is a four-month-long course and will be offered for a fee of as low as Rs 500. Interestingly, students who pass out of this course may get jobs like municipal and panchayat accountant with a starting salary of Rs 40,000 per month, he said, adding that a long-term vision of this move is to do away with or at least minimise the cases of financial frauds.

That’s not all! Speaking to newspersons at the 49th regional conference of the Eastern Indian Regional Council of ICAI, Agarwal said that ICAI is working jointly with the RBI, banks, SEBI, CAG and other concerned bodies to promote the idea and concept of non-financial reporting, which is being made mandatory. The level of carbon emission, commitment to sustainability goals and so on, are becoming increasingly important and these are being made part of non-financial reporting. Realising this, we are gearing up to spread awareness and knowledge about this, said the ICAI president.

In another significant development, ICAI is developing audio-visual learning modules on adoption of AI and how to read balance sheets, in various vernacular languages and reaching out to even far-flung areas with this, said Agarwal.