ICASL Annual Reports Award competition

Applications have now been called by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka to select the Best Annual Report in the country since 1964.

The Technical Committee and the panel of judges will take into account among other matters, compliance with statutory requirements, Sri Lanka Accounting Standards and the requirements of the Colombo Stock Exchange/Securities and Exchange Commission, disclosure of accounting and other relevant information with suitable graphs, charts, photographs and illustrations, considered useful to the investors, Timeliness in publishing accounts, and holding of the Annual General Meeting and unqualified Audit Reports.

The ICASL will commence evaluating reports for the three above competitions shortly. And the Awards Ceremony is scheduled to be held in early December at the BMICH. Over the years, ICASL has been expanding the categories and at present Annual Reports of 17 categories are adjudged for the Competition.

The categories are: Diversified Holdings (Group Companies above five and up to five subsidiaries), State Corporations & Statutory Boards, Commercial Banking Institutions, Finance Companies, Leasing Companies, Other Financial Institutions, Insurance Companies, Hotel Comapneis, Plantation Companies, Food and Beverage Companies, Non-Group Companies, Service Organisations, Manufacturing Companies, Telecommunication Companies, Land and Property Companies, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Companies, New Companies Incorporated within the last five years.

The Annual Report Awards Competition is a much looked forward to and an important even in the Business calendar of not only in Sri Lanka but also in the South Asian Region as Winners of the Annual Report Awards Competition in individual countries of the South Asian Region participate in the Best Presented Accounts Competition organised by the SAFA -South Asian Federation of Accountants. In the 2004 SAFA BPA Competition a large number of the awards given were bagged by Sri Lankan companies.

The Overall Winner of the previous competition was Commercial Bank of Ceylon Ltd and the overall 1st runners up in last year's competition were Hayleys Ltd and John Keells Holdings Ltd.

Since 2002 ICASL has been conducting a competition to select Annual Reports of Companies giving the Best Corporate Governance Disclosures and in early 2004 the Institute launched a Competition to select Annual reports of Companies having the Best Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting.