Financial Times

The supremacy of Sri Lankan corporates at the annual Best Presented Accounts Awards judged and conferred by the South Asian Federation of Accountants (SAFA) is expected to continue this year, with the 2005 annual reports of some of the country's leading companies in contention in the seven awards categories.

A new award for Corporate Governance, to be presented by SAFA for the first time this year, will be one of the highlights at the awards ceremony to be held during the latter part of the year, SAFA Vice President and Chairman of the Centre of Excellence for the Best Presented Accounts Awards Indrajith Fernando said in a statement.

Judging for the SAFA awards, the most prestigious accolade for financial reporting in the region, begins in August and involves the scrutiny of annual reports nominated by the apex accounting bodies in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's apex national accountancy body, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (ICASL), is in the process of submitting the top two annual reports of local companies and organisations under the seven categories to SAFA for this year's round of judging. The nominees are selected from the winners of the annual report competition conducted by the ICASL.

One consistent winner of the SAFA Best Presented Accounts Awards has been the Commercial Bank of Ceylon, Sri Lanka's benchmark private sector bank, which has won the top award in the Financial/Banking category for the past four years, and was adjudged the overall winner across all categories last year.

This year's nominated annual reports will be judged in seven categories: Banking Sector (subject to prudential supervision); Non-banking Financial Sector (not subject to prudential supervision); Manufacturing Sector; Communication and Information Technology Sector; Hospitality, Health, Transport and Shipping sector; Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Public Sector Entities. This is the first time in the history of the SAFA awards that annual reports of NGOs and public sector entities are being scrutinised for awards.