Kishan Reddy Lauds Company Secretaries for Playing a Key Role in Shaping the Corporate Sector

Hyderabad: Union minister G. Kishan Reddy said on Sunday, lauded company secretaries, stating that they were playing a key role in shaping the corporate sector and expressed hope that the upcoming building of the Institute of Company Secretaries in India (ICSI) here would turn out to be a centre for corporate governance.

After laying the foundation stone for the building, Kishan Reddy said that company secretaries had been acting like the backbone for corporate governance and ensuring that companies followed the laws in a transparent manner. Besides maintaining the integrity of companies, company secretaries were playing a key role in economic growth, he said.

He stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made similar observations during the golden jubilee celebrations of ICSI at Vigyan Bhavan in 2017. Kishan Reddy urged the fraternity to actively participate in the nation’s march towards ‘Viksit Bharat’.

Observing that India was fast emerging as a global economic power house, Kishan Reddy said that the foreign investors are coming in large numbers to invest in the country due to a well-laid corporate culture in what was now the fifth largest economy.

Kishan Reddy said that countries like Japan and Germany had been recruiting a large number of company secretaries, accountants and lawyers from India as they identified a good talent pool in the country. In self sustenance of the country in the economy, institutions like ICSI have been playing an excellent role, Kishan Reddy said.

He called upon the institute to double the number of company secretaries to 1.5 lakh by 2035, up from the current 75,000, according to a release.

The new facility will be a five-storey, 11,086 sq ft state-of-the-art centre. ICSI president C.S. Dhananjay Shukla highlighted the institute’s focus on capacity-building in environmental, social and governance (ESG). “Company secretaries are increasingly responsible for advising boards on ESG compliance, coordinating CSR audits, and ensuring regulatory transparency,” he said, according to the release.

The Hyderabad Chapter, established in 1974, has over 2,000 members and 6,000 students. It has produced more than 5,000 company secretaries and trained over 15,000 students, the release noted.