Thursday 25 / April / 2024
Muscat: Qais bin Mohammad Al-Yousef, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MoCIIP), issued a ministerial decision no (11/2021) to form a committee for the registration process in the Accountants and Auditors Register and to determine the work system of the committee.
The first article of the ministerial decision stipulates that the committee in the register of accountants and auditors, mentioned in the Article (11) of the law regulating the practice of the accounting and auditing profession to be formed as follows:
The Vice President of the Capital Market Sector in the Capital Market Authority as Chairman, with the membership of Director General of the Directorate General of Trade in the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, a representative of the Ministry of Finance, a representative of the Tax Authority, a representative of the Central Bank of Oman, a representative of the Omani Accountants Association, and an expert member.
The authorities of the aforementioned committee will study applications for obtaining licenses to practice the profession of accounting and auditing and will consider granting it to its applicants after verifying that the conditions stipulated in the application for registration are met, where the registration is in the register of accountants and auditors for a period of three years, which is subject to renewal.
The committee is also concerned with setting the accounting standards that must be applied when preparing financial statements, budgets, and the final financial results and following up the implementation of these standards by accounting and auditing offices.
The terms and conditions for registering in the register of accountants and auditors in the Sultanate include, the applicant must be an Omani national, dedicated to practicing the profession, holder of a university academic qualification specialising in accounting, or holder of a certificate of an internationally recognised chartered accountant or its equivalent, fully qualified, of good reputation, and has not been convicted of a judicial or disciplinary judgment in a crime against honor or trust, unless has been rehabilitated.
The committee considers the referred conditions for accepting the application, but if it finds that the aforementioned terms conditions are not met by the applicant, it must postpone the decision on the submitted application and to notify the applicant by a registered letter to attend to meet the committee in order to clarify what it sees needful. If the committee decides to reject the application, its decision must be justified. The committee shall decide on the submitted applications within a period not exceeding three months from the date of submitting the application and to notify the applicant of its decision immediately after its issuance by a registered letter. In case the referred period passed without granting the licenses, the application is considered rejected.
The second article of the ministerial decision stipulates that , the sessions of the committee shall be confidential, while it holds its meetings in accordance with an invitation to be issued by the chairperson of the committee or his deputy, while the validity of the meeting will be subjected to the provision of the presence of the committee chairperson or his deputy along with the majority of its members , where its decisions must be issued by the majority of the votes of the present members. The committee may seek the assistance of whomever it deems appropriate from the employees of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion or others, to attend its meetings without counting their vote.
The third article of the ministerial decision stipulates that, the committee for registration in the register of accountants and auditors may hold its meetings by using appropriate means of communication that allow oral and visual communication, and in case of necessity it may make its decisions by means of a scroll record.
The fourth article of the decision stipulated that, in case a decision issued by the committee for registration in the register of accountants and auditors rejecting an application for lacking of the two conditions mentioned in items (4) and (5) of Article (3) of the law regulating the practice of accounting and auditing profession, the concerned applicant shall not to submit another application to register in the accountants and auditors register before passing of two years from the date of rejecting the previous application .
The fourth article also emphasised that the rejected applicant for registration in the Register of Accountants and Auditors can file a grievance to the MoCIIP against the committee’s decision which rejected his application, within 30 days from the date of rejection notification, while the grievance to be submitted to the Minister for a decision within (30) thirty days from the date of its submission, where failure to respond to the grievance within that deadline will be considered as a rejection for the grievance.
The fifth article of the ministerial decision stipulates that , whatever contradicts this decision or contravenes its provisions shall be repealed, while the decision confirmed in its sixth article that it shall be implemented from the day following the date of its publishing in the Official Gazette.
