The Chartered Accountancy Charter has been gazetted in draft for 60 days public comment. The scope of the charter affects all companies that employ South African Institute of Chartered Accountants trainees and members who offer SAICA training programmes. The various bodies and stakeholders to the CA Charter includes IRBA, AAT, ICB, ICSA. The charter targets black professionals’ development within the profession, as well as areas of development and promotion into management positions.
The CA sector code has the same points to level table as the Codes of Good Practice (COGP), unlike the ICT codes that are far more stringent. As with the ICT codes and Construction sector code, we see an increase in the targets on ownership to 32.5% as compared to the COGP, and the proposed change requiring 20% black ownership of Chartered Accountants. The management control element is primarily the same as the COGP, however skills development has some interesting changes. By default, the required spend for SD is higher as in addition to the 6% spend, there is now a target of 4% of Net Profit After Tax (NPAT) or 0,5% of turnover to be spent on bursaries with the Thuthuka Education Upliftment Fund. Another interesting observation is that companies can earn more points by absorbing Coloured and African learners at the end of the learnership i.e. excluding Indian learners. Universities, and therefore spend with Universities, have always tended to fall under Skills Development however the CA sector code awards spend with Historically Disadvantaged Universities as Supplier Development. Slight changes to procurement and SED complete the whole scorecard.