KARACHI, Sept 2: The 20th anniversary of South Asian Federation of Accountants (Safa) was held in New Delhi on August 28, which was attended by some 100 delegates from the Saarc countries.

Badruddin Fakhri, who is the current Safa President and National Council Member of the Institute of Cost & Management Accountants of Pakistan (ICMAP), told a press conference here on Thursday.

Mr Fakhri had just returned after the two-day international conference held on August 27-28 in New Delhi on the theme: "Integrated Financial Sector in the Saarc Region". He said that the conference was addressed by regulators of capital markets and banking industry in the Saarc countries.

The conference was inaugurated by Deputy chairman, Loksabha, Rehman Khan and Minister for Company Affairs and attended by a large number of delegates from India. Safa is a forum of professional accountancy bodies in the Saarc countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and represents membership base of over 0.160 million accountants in the region.

The Safa president, who delivered the presidential address at the conference on Aug 28, stated that three Centres of Excellence were working on a regular basis for improving and harmonizing the profession covering areas like education, examination, continued professional education, training, information technology, accounting and auditing standards, quality control and ethics etc.

"Another working group was working for the last 10 years for evaluation of annual reports of corporate sector of Saarc region as per published criteria to select companies entitled to Safa Best Presented Accounts Award", said Mr Fakhri and added that it was decided to launch Safa Corporate Governance Award on December 3, 2004 in Safa conference on "Corporate Governance-Challenges and Implementation issues", which would be held in Colombo.