Press Release: Professor, University of Chittagong Dr. Md. SalimUddin, FCA, FCMA, Chairman, Bangladesh House Building Finance Corporation and Executive Committee of Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited presented a paper titled “Dynamics of Audit Quality in Bangladesh” in a virtual conference organized by The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) recently.
Dr Salim said that Public or society’s trust is the “heart-beat of any profession”: Hence, if such trust disappears or is eroded in any way, the outcome is likely to involve skepticism and the depletion of value attributed to such profession.
In any economy especially in developed economies, political stability and wealth creation depends mostly on the processes of accountability and auditing.
1997 Asian Financial Crisis, 2001 Global corporate scandals, 2008 global economic meltdown and very recent financial frauds such as Wirecard (2020), Germany, admitting nonexistence of approximately $2.6 billion of assets on the company’s balance sheet etcled to total collapse of some multinationals can be traced to failure in auditing system. Following these high-profile corporate scandals, and the financial crisis, audit quality has become one of the top-priority issues for regulators, standard setters, researchers and practitioners. All scandals also led to an international discussion about the quality of audits, since prior to this almost all failed companies had received an unrestricted audit certificate. In this situation, Dr Salim emphasis in his paper by taking above lessons ICAB as well as Audit firms in Bangladesh should take initiative to apply the updated audit quality frame work, international standard on quality management1 and 2, (ISQM), Audit related standards, principle ,rules and regulation properly for further improvement of audit quality in Bangladesh.
In addition, Dr Salim also covered the reasons for audit failure, analysis of total companies registered with registrar of joint stock companies and firms, total number of audit firms and their manpower, Global enforcement activities, BSEC and ICAB activities regarding improvement of audit quality in Bangladesh, evaluation about the low audit fees leading to poor audit quality also discussed. Requirements of Audit Transparency report or audit governance report or audit quality reports are analysed and discussed by suggesting implementing in Bangladesh urgently to ensure accountability of auditors. From the floor discussions it is revealed that audit quality is not alone subject matter of auditors it can be achieved through cooperation of all related parties of audit such as users, regulators, investors, clients and government. In welcoming address ICAB President Mahmudul Hasan Kasru FCA gave the utmost important of audit quality and ICAB has been working on it at various perspective to ensure vibrant audit profession in Bangladesh.
Dewan Nurul Islam FCA, past president of ICAB was present as session chair while Md Abdul Kader Joarder FCA, Vice President and Muhmmad Farooq FCA were the discussants on the paper. Sidarth Bareau FCA, VP made the concluding remarks and Shubashish Bose, CEO of ICAB conduct the session where more than five hundred members were participated in the virtual conference.
