The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) will soon offer an international course for students in Africa and West Asia. The curriculum will include local laws, particularly tax laws. The initiative aims to train its members and qualify them to sign balance sheets in Africa and West Asia.

Even though members of ICAI (trained in India) can sign balance sheets outside the country, it does not have the automatic approval of regulatory bodies in foreign countries. The course will automatically empower ICAI members sign balance sheets in countries outside India as they will have had training in the local laws.

Once we qualify our members in the local laws, then we would be able to convince the local authorities to provide automatic clearance to our members to practice in those regions, said ICAI president, Ved Jain.

The course will be offered in the two regions that already have seven ICAI chapters. ICAI has 150,000 members and 350,000 students under its fold. Nearly 10,000 of its members work outside India.

Jain said ICAI has received the official nod to train tier-two accountants called Accounting Technicians. These will be trained just to keep books of accounts. A two-year training programme is likely to be launched by November or December this year. The first year will be academic training and second will be as an apprentice either in companies or accounting firms.

Accounting professionals are moving to other sectors like consulting and information technology- enabled services (ITeS). There is an acute shortage of accountants in India. These accounting technicians will be trained to do just that, Jain said.