ICASL gears to pay tribute to excellence in financial reporting

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (ICASL) is once again gearing for yet another landmark event in its corporate calendar, the highly revered Annual Report Awards ceremony to be held on 7 December 2010 at the Cinnamon Grand Colombo, which will honour and recognise organisations that have achieved excellence in annual reporting.

The prestigious competition, held since 1964, is a platform which encourages excellence in the presentation of information among diverse Sri Lankan business entities in the field of financial reporting.

In today’s global economy, transparency, social accountability and good governance of an organisation, play a vital role. The Chartered Accountants Annual Report Awards Competition encourages organisations to meet these global expectations.

The 46th awards ceremony is a highly anticipated event in the corporate calendar which is not only seen as a competition, but more as an opportunity for organisations to improve their financial reporting standards.

The annual event has helped the corporate sector to significantly improve compliance in disclosing more information of their respective organisations in their annual reports.

The winner of last year’s Corporate Social Responsibility award, John Keells Holdings PLC’s Group Finance Director Ronnie Peiris, commenting on the importance of his company being adjudged the winner, said:  “John Keells Holdings PLC was extremely pleased to have been selected as the winner, corporate social responsibility, at the ICASL Annual Report Award competition in 2009. Our company subscribes to a stakeholders model of governance under the overarching theme of sustainable development and ICASL’s recognition of our efforts in this context means a lot to us. We wish the ICASL all success with the annual report award competition 2010.”

Registrations for the Annual Report Competition opened on 1 August and closed on 31 August 2010.  There are a total of 22 special categories: A winner and runner-up for each category is selected. The awards are opened to every organisation that produces an Annual Report, with entrants ranging from multinational companies to small business categories such as NGOs, clubs, associations, etc.

Annual reports will be evaluated against established criteria that assess how successful each entrant has been in communicating their objectives, highlights, performance and compliance to the intended audience. The actual financial position, financial and non financial performance of entrants are beyond the evaluation criteria.

ICASL is the largest tertiary education provider in the country with a student base of over 34,000 and over 4,000 professional members. During its existence spanning over a period of 50 years it has discharged its professional responsibilities in an exemplary manner consolidating the confidence reposed in it by the stakeholders.