ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has reduced the grace period for presentation of annual accounts to four months, according to an official source.

Earlier, the companies had been given a period of six months to submit their annual accounts after the closing of the accounting year. The reduction has been made in light of the facility provided by automation for the conduct of various operations involved in the preparation of companies’ accounts.

The objective, the source said, was to enable timely scrutiny of these accounts by the Commission and avoidance of any backlog of work that resulted from the very short time available before the onset of subsequent accounting year. The backlog that had existed from previous years, the source said in reply to a question, had already been cleared by the Commission.

It was now its endeavour to complete scrutiny of the accounts of all the companies on time and take prompt action whenever any defaults or errors are detected by its staff in the interest of sound corporate governance, he added.