Icsi Chief Calls For Better Corporate Governance

D K Prahlada Rao, the newly elected president of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), yesterday called for giving top priority to qualitative improvement in corporate governance in view of the increasing flow of foreign investment into the country.

In his maiden message on assuming office, Rao said that in the fast changing business scenario the role of company secretaries as integrated corporate managers had become all the more important.

With the enactment of the Depositories Act and the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, new avenues had opened for company secretaries, he said, and assured the members that ICSI would take steps to improve training facilities.

Rao said it would be difficult to impose qualitative codes on many corporate houses in the country which were managed by families. He suggested that the corporates themselves evolve a code to help in realisation of the new economic policy taken up after 1991.

The ICSI president laid stress on the accountability factor on the part of corporates. Financial institutions, audit committees and corporate houses should cooperate and evolve a code of good practices to suit and enhance economic development, Rao said.

He requested apex trade associations like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Associated Chambers of Commerce, and the Confederation of Indian Industry to help in evolving such a code.

Even in an era of liberalised environment and dismantled state controls, the state had to be strict in enforcement of corporate laws, Rao said.