Technology must be leveraged to enhance audit and accounting capabilities as India progresses towards its $30-trillion economic vision by 2047, Comptroller and Auditor General K. Sanjay Murthy said on Saturday.
He was addressing the World Forum of Accountants hosted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).
“The path to Viksit Bharat asks us to look at the nation as a technology-driven and knowledge-based economy with robust public finances and a resilient financial sector. The accounting and auditing professions should become important enablers in this process,” the CAG said.
Underlining the key role of digital technology as a major enabler as well as disrupter of the current times, the CAG said: “The range of technological solutions that are now available has transformed the scale and potential at which organizations can achieve higher performance outcomes. For us, it’s an exciting challenge as the India of 2025 moves towards becoming a Viksit Bharat of 2047 which aspires to have an economy of $30 trillion. More companies and larger government budgets cannot be handled by physically replicating existing structures and processes. Technology will have to be leveraged to keep up and deliver.”
A $30 trillion economy will be necessarily digital, as organizations expand into emerging areas, and global champions are born, he added.
Murthy said the bottomline is that CAG is building a tech-driven ecosystem for public financial oversight.
Accounting and auditing professionals will have to provide the required support. Adopting new technologies would help to bring required efficiencies in the accounting and auditing processes., he said.
Taking a leadership role in developing and adapting innovative technological practices would also help Indian firms to become global champions”, Murthy said.
The CAG’s address covered the gamut of technology and innovation in auditing and accounting, pointing out how AI, Machine Learning, Robotic Automation and Blockchain Technology have revolutionized the field. “The evolution of technology and adaptation will require a transformation in intellectual and infrastructural capacities,” he said. Referring to the recent ‘The Future of Jobs Report 2025’ by the World Economic Forum, the CAG noted how it has highlighted the drivers of transformation and skillsets needed in coming years. “Technology-related roles are the fastest-growing jobs in percentage terms, including big data specialists, fintech engineers, AI and Machine Learning specialists and software and application developers, it says. Two-fifths of existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period,” the CAG quoted the report as saying.
Outlining the gargantuan responsibility of the CAG institution, Murthy said “we are moving with the times, and with a sense of the Viksit Bharat mission. We have embarked upon a comprehensive digitization journey. We are committed to further integrating advanced technologies to bolster audit capabilities. Recognising the transformative potential of AI and ML, we have already taken the leap of faith and started building necessary infrastructure and processes to harness these technologies to use them in auditing processes and to audit AI applications themselves”.