KARACHI, May 7: The two-day conference of South Asian Federation of Accountants (SAFA) concluded at a local hotel on Saturday. Speakers and accounting experts from Pakistan and other Saarc countries expressed their views during the seven technical sessions of the moot.

As many as 1,500 delegates participated in the conference organized jointly by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) and the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants Pakistan (ICMAP).

Speaking as chief guest at the concluding session, Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan Chairman Dr Tariq Hassan agreed with an earlier speaker that the relevant laws, rules, regulations and code of conduct must be applied in a uniform manner and that their applications should be monitored closely.

The role of auditors must be clearly described, he added. The SECP chief was of the view that the WTO regime would have its impact on the regulatory environment in accountancy. Therefore, the profession of accounting also needed to be upgraded. He believed that the auditors needed to play their role in the changing regulatory environment.—APP