The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India will spend Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) in the next five years for setting up five centres of excellence, which would impart management skills to its members.
The institute will also create an e-learning platform for students of chartered accountancy at a cost of Rs 5.5 crore (Rs 55 million).
"We have decided to spend Rs 200 crore in five years for setting up a centre of excellence in our five regional offices. The first would come up at Hyderabad in March followed by other centres," said Sunil Talati, President, ICAI, in Kolkata today on the sidelines of the ICAI regional conference.
"We found that management students have an edge on this front over our members. To overcome this, the centre of excellence has been planned. But dearth of good faculty is making rollout slow," he added.
In order to support students of chartered accountancy, the institute has also decided to have an e-learning platform. "E-learning will help students to take tuition from anywhere and it will be interactive. We will spend Rs 5.5 crore in this project to be executed by Hyderabad-based IT company Sankhya Infotech," Talati said.
ICAI's e-learning portal is also expected to be operational from June 2008. There are around 1.45 lakh chartered accountants in the country.