Govt allows ICWAI to change its name to ICMAI

Cost accounting body ICWAI will soon be known as Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of India (ICMAI) with the government agreeing for a change of name of the body.     

"The request for name change to Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of India has been accepted in principle ... It will require amendment in the ICWAI Act. We are working on it ... Hopefully in the near future it will be done," Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said today.     

Set up in 1959 through an Act of Parliament, ICWAI has over 47,000 members and two lakh students. It has been requesting for the change of name for long.     

There is a growing importance for cost accountants for improving production, Khurshid said, adding the new name will make it more compatible with the job ICWAI members perform.      

"It (the name change) will be a true representation of what we stand for. We are not merely cost accountants, helping companies keep record of things, we go beyond it," ICWAI President G N Venkatraman said.     

The world over, he said, cost and works practitioners are being known and as cost management accountants.     

"We are born out of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, London, formerly they were cost accountants, all subsidiaries have changed their names, in Bangladesh, in Pakistan... In Indian for the last several years it was stuck," he said.