KARACHI, July 7: The “best presented accounts” ceremony for the year 2002, would be held on July 25 at which the Federal Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs, Shaukat Aziz would give away the awards.

A press release issued by the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of Pakistan (ICMAP) on Monday stated that the “Best Presented Accounts” Awards were instituted and presented to companies in 2000 with a view to promoting good governance in the corporate sector. “The Joint Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) and the ICMAP had requested all the companies listed on the stock exchanges to send their published accounts for the year 2002,” the ICMAP press release stated, adding that the joint committee had also circulated the criteria for selection of the best presented annual accounts.

For facilitating the selection, the entire corporate sector had been divided into six sectors, namely (i) services; (ii) textiles; (iii) chemicals & fertilizer (iv) engineering (v) fuel & energy and (vi) miscellaneous.

“The published annual reports for 2002, which were received for the contest were evaluated by a sub-committee comprising members of the two institutes and representatives of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP),” ICMAP press release stated.

A statement issued by ICAP last month had said that the joint Committee of the ICAP and ICMAP had been holding the Best Corporate Reports competition since the year 2000. In order to promote the continual improvement of corporate reporting in Pakistan, the criteria for judging the reports were constantly reviewed and refined. The criteria used for the year 2002 were rationalized on the basis of previous experience of the two competitions and the global changes in the corporate world.

This year, the joint committee in co-ordination with the SECP had again reviewed the criteria for 2003; the latest corporate developments had been included, and the marking of some sections of the criteria reports had been amended to make it more objective and logical.