For further improving the quality of financial reporting and auditing in the country, every responsible stakeholder should contribute independently through maintaining integrity and professionalism. Management of company, audit committee, internal and external auditors and the regulators require to perform their own responsibilities properly in this direction.
Speakers at a virtual conference on Saturday forwarded the observations. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh-ICAB organised the virtual members’ conference on Dynamics of Audit Quality in Bangladesh where Prof. Dr. Md. Salim Uddin FCA, Council Member of ICAB and Professor, Department of Accounting, University of Chittagong presented the keynote paper. ICAB President Mahmudul Hasan Khusru FCA delivered address of welcome, according to a statement.
Dewan Nurul Islam FCA, Chairman of the Investigation and Disciplinary Committee (IDC) and Past President-ICAB conducted the conference as the Session Chairman. As panel speakers Muhammad Farooq FCA, Member Council and Immediate Past President ICAB; and Md. Abdul Kader Joaddar FCA, Vice President-ICAB took part in the conference.
ICAB President Mahmudul Hasan Khusru FCA said, the most important issue for audit profession is the quality of audit. There is no way for auditors to compromise the quality, he said and added that ICAB has strengthened its monitoring activities which include deploying dedicated employees, developing and updating frameworks, checklist and automation. It also introduced an integrated audit software for improving the quality of audit, he added.
Keynote presenter Dr. Md. Salim Uddin FCA said, following the high-profile corporate scandals, and the recent financial crisis, audit quality has become one of the top-priority issues for regulators, standard setters, researchers and practitioners.
In the keynote paper it was revealed that from the RJSC, a total of 1.76 lakh public and private limited companies obtained registration till July 2020 and more than 88 per cent or around 1.55 lakh business firms are active.
The keynote presenter also informed that the NBR taskforce found among 1.55 lakh companies, only 78,000 companies obtained taxpayers identification numbers and on average only 35,000 TIN holding companies submitted income tax returns where as ICAB registered auditors perform audit of only seventeen thousand companies in a year. There is a clear mismatch in above mention figures, which is unexpectable, the keynote presenter lamented.
To eliminate such malpractice ICAB developed an automated document verification system (DVS) to authenticate audited financial statements and find out unscrupulous business entities that used doctored reports to evade corporate tax. Now, NBR and other stakeholders are able to identify the fake reports using the system as DVS made mandatory for all ICAB members.
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