More young people should take up chartered accountancy for study as it is inexpensive and offers good job opportunities, Vijay Kapur, Director, Board of Studies, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), has said.

He was the chief guest at the State-level conference of students of chartered accountancy held in the city on Thursday.

The conference was organised by the Mangalore branch of Southern India Regional Council (SIRC) and the Southern India Chartered Accountant Students’ Association (SICASA).

Inexpensive

He said studying to take up the profession was inexpensive. It would cost less than Rs.50,000 to study for four years. After finishing the course, the job prospects for students were “very good”. Of the 120-crore population in the country, two lakh had done the course. So, there was plenty of opportunity for more people to take up the course. “The young should take up this course. It costs nothing. Students get a monthly stipend of at least Rs.1,000 for three years (during articleship),” he said.

Doing the course would give students a great opportunity to get a foothold in industry, Mr. Kapur said. He said: “We provide almost everything free of cost. There are question papers and unlimited grants to the branches (of ICAI). There are no constraints for students.” He said ICAI would organise 50 such programmes in a year.

T.N. Manoharan, past president, ICAI, who inaugurated the conference, said that the Mangalore branch of ICAI must host events of national-level.

Students, who attended the programme included 400 from Mangalore, 75 from Udupi, seven each from Bangalore and Hubli and three from Hassan.

There were technical sessions on subjects such as service tax, audit of educational institutes (of relevance only for CA students) and one on career guidance which was for students across various streams, said Sanjeev, a student of chartered accountancy.