The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) on Thursday awarded 23 different business entities in 12 categories for furnishing quality annual reports in 2019.
Titled 20th ICAB National Award, Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi, handed over the prizes as chief guests to the winners in an event at the capital’s Pan Pacific Sonargaon hotel.
“I hope that this event will positively encourage the entities to build trust, confidence and credibility that would address the sustainable development of the country,” Munshi said.
The ICAB-nominated annual reports of Bangladeshi corporate entities have attained most awards among South Asian countries over the last decade, which indicate the improvement in the quality of financial reporting.
The minister, however, urged the auditors to be ethically stronger for ensuring a quality audit report on the financial statements.
In the majority of the cases, the companies showed inaccurate data in their financial statements, said Commerce Secretary Jafar Uddin.
“They intentionally do it to take advantage of taxes and bank loans, or to cheat investors.”
The business entities and auditors should address the issue further, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic-induced challenges, he added.
More than half the business entities audited their financial statements with unauthorised or fake auditors, which was a serious concern, said FRC Chairman Hamid Ullah Bhuiyan.
The revenue board recently identified 19,000 unauthorised or fake audited reports out of 35,000.
The FRC chairman urged the ICAB to increase the number of skilled chartered accountants and auditors.
ICAB’s role is to promote, enhance and improve the framing of financial statements and reports to reflect fair views of the entities to safeguard the interest of the investors, government, stakeholders and other user groups, said ICAB President Muhammad Farooq.
The awards will encourage the application of accounting/financial reporting and auditing standards.
The ICAB distributed awards for well-presented reports to listed and non-listed 23 entities in 12 different categories including public sector banks, private bank, financial institutions, manufacturing, insurance, service sectors, information and communication technology, non-governmental organisations, agriculture, state-owned enterprises and diversified holdings.
IDLC Finance had the best-presented report in 2019.
In the banking sector (private) category, Brac Bank secured the first prize, while Shahjalal Islami Bank and Bank Asia jointly won second prize, and Mutual Trust Bank and Mercantile Bank jointly bagged the third prize.
In the financial services sector, IDLC Finance won the first prize, IPDC Finance second and LankaBangla Finance third.
In the manufacturing category, British American Tobacco Bangladesh, Orion Pharma and Summit Power won the top three prizes, while Grameenphone was the lone winner in the category of communication and IT.
Green Delta Insurance became first, Prime Insurance second and Reliance Insurance third prize in the insurance category.
In the public sector entities category, Investment Corporation of Bangladesh (ICB) won the first prize.
SAJIDA Foundation, Ghashful, CODEC and ActionAid Bangladesh won the prizes in NGO category.
Unique Hotel & Resort was first in the services sector category, while Golden Harvest Agro Industries was first in the agriculture category.
In the integrated reporting category, LankaBangla Finance won first prize, IDLC Finance second and Bank Asia and BRAC Bank were the joint third.
In the corporate governance disclosures category, IDLC Finance and Lanka Bangla Finance became the joint first prize winners, Bank Asia got second prize and Islami Bank Bangladesh and BRAC Bank were the joint third prize winners.
