Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday, appealed to chartered accountants to help the government to trace shell companies.
During an interaction at a programme organised by the Udupi district unit of the BJP to highlight nine years of achievements of the Union government led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi she said, “Refunds on input tax running to thousand crores of rupees have been obtained by shell companies. From companies sitting in one room without even a table and chair. Such ‘ghost companies’ have obtained refunds for no buying and selling and for no commodity movement. There were only paper movements. And this we have started tightening by using artificial intelligence (AI).”
She said that CAs should join hands with the government to trace such ‘ghost companies.’
Ms. Sitharaman said that considering the significance of ethics in the Chartered Accountancy profession and the growing emphasis on Information Technology, ethics and IT are being integrated with all the core subjects at the final level of Chartered Accountancy education.
“The CA course itself is getting infused with these details,” she said.
Referring to the need for mutual recognition of professional courses and professional certificates by countries internationally, she said that it is getting high priority at the global level. With the mutual recognition, professionals can move elsewhere and do business as well in addition to doing jobs and entering into contract.
The Minister said that the nine-year period was dominated by doing “seva” of people by the BJP and inclusion of the poor to have credit and medical facility. With the Ayushman Bharat programme, poor can get free treatment up to ₹5 lakh easily.
Stating that Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of India, she said that the government enhanced the Budgetary outlay to the MSME sector from ₹3,285 crore in 2013-14 to ₹22,138 crore in 2023-14.
