A unique number for chartered accountants tells tales about the economy

livemint.com:

Mint reported in February. Unlike many sectors, only a limited number of candidates qualify to be CAs every year, making their services more valuable in a growing economy. Documents signed off as part of GST and tax audits shot up 87% annually in 2022 to 6.18 million but shrank by over 36% in 2023 to 3.9 million.

Two chartered accountants, who did not wish to be named, said this could be because the GST authorities now allow self-certification of a sales reconciliation statement to be filed by businesses, which were earlier certified by CAs and cost accountants, as part of improving ease of doing business. Agarwal said that in line with the economic growth, issuance of these documents is expected to further grow. Documents signed off by CAs as part of statutory audit and assurance function saw a 28% jump annually in 2022 to 3.16 million, but shrank 6% in 2023 to 2.95 million.

In 2023, over 1.15 million statutory audits were done on corporations, the largest class of the audit services done in the year. Audit of non-corporate entities, internal audits, stock audits, audit of government schemes and issuing limited review reports are among the other sought after services for CAs, data showed. “UDIN helps in verifying the authenticity of the certificate.