The Hindu Business Line : Kalam urges CAs to focus on farm sector

VALUE ADDITION: The President, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, with the President of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Mr Kamlesh S. Vikamsey, during the inauguration of the international conference on `Accountancy profession: Adding value to new horizons of economic growth' in the Capital on Thursday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Sept. 1

SKETCHING out an expanded role for the chartered accountants (CA) fraternity to look beyond auditing and accounting, the President, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today urged the 1.3 lakh strong CA community to consider `national economic development' as an important mission.

He was inaugurating an international conference with a theme `Accountancy profession: Adding value to new horizons of economic development', organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

Mr Kalam called upon ICAI, with its corporate experience, to pay attention to the agriculture and rural development sectors also.

"The Tenth Plan is focused on the agro-food processing and it is time that the ICAI gets interested in the agriculture sector as in the case of manufacturing and services," Mr Kalam said.

The President wanted to know as to whether a member of the institute could provide a business model for enhancing the momentum of the country's economic activity and enable it to realise gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 10 per cent and maintain it consistently for 10 years from the existing 7 per cent.

Mr Kalam also came up with a possible vision for ICAI in 2049, which would be the hundredth year of its existence.

He suggested that the vision of ICAI could be "ICAI will transform into a financial management and financial advice organisation with focus towards economic development of the nation and enhancing the growth of GDP in all three sectors of the economy".

Stating that it has acquired financial management experience for many decades within the country and abroad, Mr Kalam suggested that the institute could provide value addition to the PURA (providing urban amenities in rural areas) movement.

Mr Kalam said that there is a need to link the provision of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill with the PURA as envisaged in the Bharat Nirman Programme. In his estimate, bringing about rural prosperity would need at least 7,000 PURAs.

He said that the members of the institute could work out a business plan for the PURA in their region for enabling it to be run by small-scale industrialists located in the area.

The President also suggested that the members of ICAI could take up the mission of upgrading some of the small-scale industries that are in difficulty and bring normalcy to them in collaboration with local entrepreneurs through a revival package.

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