he President, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Kabir Alkali Mohammed, has said his tenure will focus on enforcing ethics in the profession.
In an interview in Lagos, the ICAN boss said the body is structured in a way that ethical abuse complaints brought before the institute are treated and offenders punished.
He said the institute must continue to expose ethical compromises and sanction offenders, whose conduct, if not checked, could demean and bring the hard earned and towering goodwill of the profession to disrepute.
Mohammed explained that the democratic and rancour-free succession process in ICAN makes it a model for power transition, urging the country to borrow a leaf from the body.
He said the yearly change of leadership in the institute was commendable and speaks volumes about the civility of chartered accountants. He advised members of ICAN to be involved and drive the process, for the renaissance of its value systems.
Mohammed canvassed equity and justice, ensuring that premium placed on the integrity of chartered accountants, by stakeholders, would continue to be justified.
“This is our finest hour to impact the cause of national development, and human progress, with our skills and professional expertise,” he said.
He explained that the ICAN brand must remain the benchmark of best practices, the nation’s lighthouse in ethical conduct and professionalism, and pathfinder to business.
“As the voice of conscience and public interest, we cannot afford to fail, falter or shirk our responsibility, imposed on us, by our attestation franchise. In words and deeds, we must be different and outstanding, irrespective of the decay in the larger society,” he said.
He said the Council under his leadership will reinforce its mechanism, for monitoring and enforcing compliance, to professional ethics and practice standards.
“We will continue to lead the drive, for high quality financial reporting, benchmarked on global best practices, and deliver more on our public interest mandate, by meeting and surpassing expectations,” he said.
He said he would partner with the government, and regulatory agencies to set a new tone, for corporate governance and public service. He said he would be proactively setting direction of change in the profession and economy, and would be able to sustain the leadership position of the ICAN brand.
As a body, we have the technical capability and professional expertise, to make these initiatives happen, he said.
He explained that previous failures at signing relationship with some International Federation of Accountants member-bodies, has been the subject of serious engagements, between the Institute and the World Bank.
“I am delighted to report that through a World Bank-financed twinning arrangement with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, the very Institute that gave birth to ICAN, this hurdle will soon be surmounted. To achieve this, the institute’s syllabus, training manuals and certification processes, are being comprehensively reviewed,” he said.
He said his team is set to implement various policy initiatives, embedded in the institute’s 2012 to 2017 Strategy Document, adding that they will not lose sight of the challenge, and that they would face an important segment of the institute’s membership, that is, the possibility of obtaining a bachelor’s degree as part of the package on the road to qualifying as a chartered accountant.
Cash-less
The cost of printing, moving, sorting and destructing of bad currency notes has been put at N114 billion yearly by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the CBN Deputy Governor, Operations, Tunde Lemo, has said. The rising cost of cash management confirms the need for cash-less policy implementation in the country.
He spoke in Umuahia, Abia State while sensitising the public on the need to embrace the policy as it would help in developing the economy and attracting foreign investors and that the cash-less policy has been beneficial to the economy.
He said the policy has assisted Lagos and Ogun states in growing their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) are ripping the benefits of the cash-less policy, pointing out that their internally generated revenue has increased tremendously.
He said Lagos State’s internally generated revenue is N29 billion yearly with the expectation that it will go up to N50 billion in the next few years. He added that Abia State has the opportunity of achieving the same result when it keys into the policy.
He explained that the policy was introduced to reduce the cash being carried by people in the transaction of their daily business, adding that a society that does business based on cash will attract corruption and also helped to have crimes like kidnapping thrive in their society.
IFRS
The implementation of statutes in the International Financial Reporting Standard (FIRS) by Finance Houses will assist them in securing funding from local and foreign investors, Jim Osayande Obazee, the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer, Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria has said.
Speaking at the quarterly chief executives business luncheon organised by Finance Houses Association of Nigeria (FHAN) in Lagos, he called for easier regulation of financial information of entities in the country enhancement of investors’ confidence in the quality assurance systems of financial reporting in public and private sector entities.
Obazee, who spoke on the theme: IFRS adoption in Nigeria: Issues and challenges for non-bank financial institutions, said the implementation of IFRS requires considerable preparation both at the country and entity levels to ensure coherence and provide clarity on the authority that IFRS will have in relation to other national laws.
He said there is need for technical partners forum of accounting firms that can identify financial reporting issues requiring clarification to avoid inconsistencies.
He explained that there should be limited number of professional accounting organisations, preparers and users, including regulators that can provide the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB) with useful feedback, not only after standards are finalised and ready for implementation, but early in the drafting process.
FIRS
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and SAP West Africa, a market leader in enterprise application software, has collaborated to host a revenue management summit meant to assist stakeholders boost Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).
It said its target is to boost stakeholders’ IGRs by 200 per cent year on year with state- of-the-art technology.
At the summit, FIRS Acting Executive Chairman, Kabir Mashi, listed the challenges and opportunities of revenue management in the country. He applauded SAP West Africa for its foresight and commitment in ensuring that firms grow their IGRs by hosting the summit.
“SAP’s objective to bring together the key tax and revenue communities in the African continent, debate the status on related topics, and above all, address concerns around tax collection, revenue management and related aspects is valuable,” he said.
Mashi said FIRS’ partnership with SAP West Africa is an excellent illustration of how technology can be leveraged to improve Public Service effectiveness,’ particularly in SAP’s innovation on triple digit revenue growth and tax and revenue management solution.
Discount Houses
The CBN has linked part of the challenges facing Discount Houses to the subsector’s poor capital base that makes it difficult for them to compete with commercial banks as Authorised Dealers in money market instruments. The CBN Monetary, Credit, Foreign Trade and Exchange Policy Guidelines for 2012 to 2013 classified commercial banks and discount houses as authorised dealers in the money market instruments.
CBN Director of Communication, Ugochukwu Okoroafor, said the sub-sector has not been able to compete with commercial banks since 2005 after the banking watchdog increased the capital base of banks from N2 billion to N25 billion.
The capital base of Discount Houses has remained around N2 billion since then. Discount Houses are meant to facilitate the issue and sale of short term government securities and other eligible short-term commercial bills.
Okoroafor explained that the banking consolidation of that era favoured commercial banks against discount houses in their scramble for businesses. He said that since many of the banking needs of people provided by discount houses are now done by commercial banks, the operating environment has steadily risen against discount houses.
But Emmanuel Ebuk, an Executive of Consolidated Discount Limited, said the problem of discount houses had nothing to do with capitalisation and that his firm has a capital base of N27 billion, nothing that many operators in the sector are well capitalised.
Deposits
Public sector deposits were N2.5 trillion, about 20 per cent of total deposits in the banking system, at the end first quarter of the year, Currencies Analyst at Ecobank Nigeria Olakunle Ezun has said.
He explained in a report titled: Nigeria: Indirect Monetary Policy tightening, said aside the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by N650 billion, after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) increased the ratio to 50 per cent, an additional N955 billion will be removed from the economy. The CBN, had last week, raised the CRR from 12 to 50 per cent during the last Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting.
This, he said, suggested that the tightening effect will be immediate, which in turn could require CBN repos to rebalance liquidity demand and supply.
He predicted that monetary policy appears set to remain relatively unchanged in the months ahead.
“Assuming no significant change to key indicators, we think the Monetary Policy Rate will be held at 12 per cent in subsequent MPC meetings, although further indirect tightening may occur if liquidity remains above target,” he said.
Dud cheque
Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) have begun nation-wide sensitisation of customers against issuance of dud cheques.
The lenders are through text messages, emails and letters to serial defaulters, drawing attention of their customers to the recent circular issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) directing banks to advise customers against issuing Dud Cheques to third parties.
According to CBN, the volume of dishonoured cheques in the financial system is rising and has shown no signs of declining. Guaranty Trust Bank in a statement to its customers, said such act breeds low confidence in the acceptance of cheques and adversely affects the cash-less policy aimed at reducing the volume of cash based transactions in the country.
As part of efforts to address the issuance of dud cheques, CBN has directed banks to identify customers who have issued dud cheques on three instances with effect from July 5.
Banks have been directed to send details of customers together with copies of dud cheques to CBN. The Central Bank will in turn forward such details to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for further investigation.
“Our esteemed customers are therefore advised to make sure that their accounts are funded before issuing a cheque to a third party and to also confirm all cheques via our internet banking platform or Relationship Managers, as this will ensure the cheque is honoured,” the bank said.
