Auditors are now more than watchdogs and have a role of being conscience-keepers, according to experts at the sixth international conference of the Muscat chapter of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India that concluded on Saturday. 
 

The role was increasingly challenging in the wake of increasingly reported scams in the corporate world and their ripple effect was stringent regulations, said Meera Sanyal, former CEO and chairperson of Royal Bank of Scotland. 

In her address at the conference with the theme ‘Moving to a new world order – role of finance professionals’, she said that “what looks straight may not be very simple” and finance professionals were the custodians and interpreters of the maze.

Capital Market Authority Executive President HE Abdullah Al Salmi inaugurated the seminar and said finance professionals had the important role in good reporting and meeting disclosure requirement, etc. 

He said that the CMA would ensure the availability of adequate capital for infrastructure development. 

ICAI president K Raghu said that the institute was the second largest accounting body in the world with around 240,000 members and was ‘churning out highly skilled and efficient finance professionals’.

Indian Ambassador HE JS Mukul commended ICAI Muscat chapter for its role in promoting knowledge-sharing and mutual learning seminars.

Central Bank of Oman board member Hatem Shanfari highlighted Oman’s and India’s position compared to other developed countries and said that there would be paradigm shift of economic power from the West to Asia.

There was a session on technological advancement in mobile applications which integrated ERP business applications and also the SMAC (Social, Media, Analytical and Cloud) by Sandeep Gudavalli, Alex Pavan and Mohamad Al Jamil. OMAN TRIBUNE