The Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) plans to open three more overseas centres in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, its president B Narasimhan announced on Friday.
The institute maintains six overseas centres in UAE, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia and Canada.
The new centres will be developed based on the number of ICSI members in each country.
Narasimhan stated, “These centres will augment professional opportunities for the ICSI members, besides assisting and facilitating practical training for students and conducting examinations in these countries”.
“ICSI is laying great thrust on companies to become ESG (environmental, social and governance) compliant in the coming days”, Narasimhan continued.
Narasimhan went on to say, “ICSI has already added two new subjects to its curriculum, ESG and artificial intelligence (AI)”.
“ESG is the need of the hour. It has been made mandatory by SEBI to submit business responsibility and sustainability reporting (BRSR) for the top 1000 companies in terms of market capitalisation. These companies are required to disclose their ESG performance along with the annual reports”, Narasimhan explained.
According to Narasimhan, ESG-compliant companies will attract overseas investors.
“Foreign investors will enquire whether the Indian company in which they plan to invest are ESG compliant. The ‘stewardship code’ for institutional investors is still in its infancy in the country and gives immense scope for company secretary professionals to expand their scope of practice”, Narasimhan added.
Narasimhan stated that there is a significant shortage of business professionals in the country with only 70,000 members, of which 14,000 are practising.
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