A total of 1.29 lakh students have registered to appear for the May-June session of the chartered accountancy qualification exam under the new syllabus scheme launched last year, the new president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Ranjeet Kumar Agarwal announced on Wednesday. ICAI is the apex regulatory authority for the profession and education of chartered accountancy in India.
ICAI saw a total of 49,000 registrations at the foundational level, 58,900 registrations at the intermediate level and 21,185 students have registered for the final level since the new scheme was launched on July 1, 2023, Agarwal announced in a press conference. The ICAI CA exams are conducted twice yearly, in May-June and November-December.
The institute is set to conduct the intermediate and final examination based on the new syllabus for the first time at the beginning of May this year. The schedule, however, may change after the announcement of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections that are likely to be conducted in the same month.
“It is pertinent to mention that the General Election to 18th Lok Sabha is scheduled to be held in 2024, notification for which is awaited. Accordingly, the Examination Committee may reschedule May 2024 CA Examination, if the dates of General Election coincide with the present Examination Schedule,” an official notice said.
Setting up the expectations of the institutes, Agarwal said that by 2047, India will need more than 30 lakh new CAs to cater to the growing economy. “For every one trillion dollar growth in the economy, there is an expected requirement of 1 lakh chartered accountants. By the time India reaches its 100 years of independence, there will be an expected requirement of 30 lakh CAs,” said Agarwal.
Currently, there are four lakh CA members registered under ICAI.
The expectation, however, is ambitious considering the pass percentage in CA examination ranges from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. In November 2023, out of 32,907 students that appeared for the final level exam, only 3,009 cleared the exam.
To cater to this need, the ICAI president has plans to help attract students right from the school level. “We have entered into agreements with more than 500 colleges and schools across India. Under these agreements, we are hiring local faculty and giving them necessary support so that they can teach CA courses in their own schools and colleges. We have also made provisions to support school-level career counselling initiatives, online query resolutions, tuition classes under these agreements,” Agarwal told The Indian Express.
‘Each one, teach one’
For the benefit of students, Agarwal also emphasised on the need to support CA students through hand holding and free online content.
“We are coming up with a portal and encouraging existing CA members to handhold at least 1 CA student. We are calling this initiative ‘each one, teach one’. We are also planning to provide lectures of the best faculties across that will be beneficial to students free of cost on our website as well as YouTube. Even non CA students can also learn from these lectures and pique their interest in pursuing a career,” he explained.
ICAI campus placements
Agarwal also announced the progress ICAI has made in placing students in the last year. Among the 22,000 newly qualified chartered accountants in 2023, more than 9,000 students were hired in the campus placements where 138 companies made offers. The rest, he said, opted to choose “better opportunities” outside the campus placements. “There are several chartered accountants who had better options to pursue and decided to opt out of campus placements despite the offers made in campus placements. There is no unemployment in this course, once a student qualifies,” said Agarwal.
Within India, the highest package of Rs 24 lakh was offered to a student meanwhile the highest package abroad stood at Rs 41 lakh per annum. The average package last year for all the students put together stood at Rs 12 lakh per annum. Currently, a student pays Rs 75,000 for five years to become a chartered accountant. “We are empowering the middle class of this country to pursue a career in chartered accountancy so that they can get a minimum package of Rs 10 lakh,” said Agarwal.
To increase its reach, in 2022, ICAI had announced that, through March 31, 2025, students registering from the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, and eight North-East states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — would receive a 75 per cent reduction in the registration course fee for all levels of CA courses. “Under this scheme, 7,000 students from both Jammu and Kashmir and Northeastern states have availed the fee concessions,” Agarwal said.
There are currently 8.5 lakh students pursuing the CA course across India.
To keep up with technological advancements, the new president has also constituted a committee to implement artificial intelligence. “We will take stock of all the wings of the institute and how AI can be helpful to the students, members and employees. Within two months we will roll out a roadmap to make the institute AI-enabled,” he said. “AI will be a helping hand for our CAs so that they can focus on other compliances, do deeper analysis and advise businesses for a growing economy,” he added.
ICAI: There are currently 8.5 lakh students pursuing the CA course across India. 
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