ICAB CEO stresses auditor independence, governance reforms at FE roundtable

Strengthening auditor independence and enforcing good governance are vital to improving Bangladesh’s business environment, said Shubhashish Bose, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB), at a roundtable titled “Business Climate: Reforms, Opportunities, and Challenges Ahead”, organised by The Financial Express on Monday.

Bose opened with a firm assertion of the role of auditors in ensuring transparency. “Auditors should be given independence. That’s the main thing,” he said, questioning why only listed companies are required to undergo statutory audits. 

 

"What about the non-listed companies? They should also be audited if we want to have a clear or appropriate picture of the business.”

Drawing from recent experiences in banking audits, Bose criticised the current system in which auditors’ findings are influenced by tripartite meetings between Bangladesh Bank, the auditor, and the bank in question. 

 

“The auditor’s report was not accepted by the meeting. The auditor was asked to change all those figures,” he said, describing how losses were allowed to be spread over years to preserve the bank's image. 

 

Bose stressed that such practices compromised both transparency and the integrity of financial reporting.

“Is there any independence given to the auditors? If there is, definitely, auditors will not do it,” he added.

He also emphasised protecting Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) from undue pressure, suggesting that they should not be dismissed without consent from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). 

 

“Otherwise, we cannot have proper accounts; we cannot have a proper picture of the business.”

Highlighting gaps in adopting international standards, Bose noted that IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 were still not enforced in the banking and insurance sectors. “How can the true picture of the business come? It is not possible,” he remarked.

Bose also called for skill development and wider export of accounting and nursing services, along with advocating industry–academia collaboration to develop value-added fashion products. “We should not just focus on products; we should focus on services,” he concluded.

 

Lutfey Siddiqi, Special Envoy on International Affairs to the Chief Adviser, attended the discussion as the chief guest, while Md Anwar Hossain, Secretary at the Ministry of Science and Technology, and Mohammad Hasan Arif, Vice Chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), joined as special guests.

The session was chaired by Shamsul Huq Zahid, Editor and CEO of The Financial Express, and moderated by Shiabur Rahman Shihab, Head of Online and Digital Content at FE.