Latest draft rules issued by ministry outrage cost auditors

The latest draft rules issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) related to the cost records
and audit mechanism could substantially curb the scope of the cost audit profession and have outraged its practitioners.

The salient features of the draft rules are as under:

• Number of industries covered is reduced.
• Turnover and Net worth thresholds have been increased substantially. The threshold has been threshold from net worth of Rs 5 crore to Rs 500 crore and the threshold of turnover from the specified product is fixed at Rs 100 crore.
• Apart from companies required to undergo cost audit, all others have been exempted from maintaining even cost accounting records