50,000 company secretaries needed in next 6 years: ICSI

The country will need around 50,000 company secretaries in the coming five to six years, and the Institute of Company Secretaries of India(ICSI) is looking at penetrating into smaller towns and cities to meet the demand-supply gap.

There are around 23,000 company secretaries in the country now. "We are trying to increase our enrollments with the rising demand. Student registrations were up by 55 per cent in 2008 compared to the year before. 2007 registrations were up by 50 per cent compared to 2006", said Datla Hanumanta Raju, president, ICSI. So far, registrations have crossed the 40,000-mark.

"The demand for company secretaries(CS) have been on the rise, as any company with a paid-up capital of more than Rs 5 crore needs to have a CS. Any company with a paid-up capital between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 5 crore needs to obtain a secretarial compliance certificate issued by a CS," said Vinayak S Khanvalkar, vice president, ICSI.

In addition to this, ICSI is also pursuing with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to make compulsory the compliance of secretarial standards by listed companies, as is proposed in the new Companies' Bill.

"We are also pursuing with the ministry of labour and employment for need for enhancing the compliance level in the industry and commercial establishments by way of prescribing compliance certificate report by a company secretary in practice. The Institute is now pursuing the other state governments to recognize company secretary in their VAT legislations.

Similarly, the Institute has requested SEBI to recognize company secretary to issue compliance certificate to Stock Exchanges to facilitate them to list securities offered in IPO /FPO", said N K Jain, secretary and chief executive officer of ICSI.

If these were adopted, it will further enhance the need for CS in the coming years. As of now, the northern region fared better in terms of enrollments, with 40,000 students compared to around 15,000 in the east. There were only around 2,000 members in the East.