Johannesburg - Hassen Kajie wants to continue the strategy to enhance the image of the accountancy and auditing in South Africa in his one-year term of office as the new chairman of the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA).

Top of his agenda are the restructuring of the industry to reduce duplication, the creation of a public oversight body, the continued transformation of SAICA, and stepped-up efforts to increase the number of black accountants.

A graduate of the University of the Western Cape, Kajie is a partner at Gobodo Chartered Accountants. He is the second black person to hold the office pf chairman, the first being Wiseman, Nkuhlu, the economic advisor to President Thabo Mbeki. Interviewed this week about his intentions, Kajie said one priority would be the industry's restructuring. SAICA was self-regulated, but the profession, he said, was in negotiations with the government on a new landscape for accounting.

"The government needs to place their resources forward and we can then look at the structure of the profession. The general public doesn't know the difference between the Public Accountants' and Auditors' Board (PAAB) [a statutory body] and SAICA, and there is a certain amount of duplication of duties.

"The new structures had got to be such that it includes PAAB, SAICA and the government. We're in the discussion stage with the government on what is going to be the best structure.

"We don't know what the answer is, but once we do we will prepare a discussion paper and seek comments from our members before we finalise everything.

"In South Africa, the image of the profession has been dented and we need to enhance it. Before the Enron failure, SAICA already had several initiatives in place. Two years ago the members of the board signed ethics pledge certificates ... to follow SAICA's code of ethics.

"That programme was started to make members more conscious about their ethical responsibilities long before Enron. The idea now is to roll this out to the regions and members," he said.

Asked what lesson could be learnt from the Enron failure, Kajie said : "There's a lot of information still to come, but essentially Enron was a business failure, never an audit failure. The US has a regulatory body, but we are in a more vulnerable position. If this could happen there, imagine what could happen here.

"The lesson for South Africa is that we should have more regulation of the profession, and to have better regulation we need the interaction of the government.

"At the moment SAICA is self-regulatory. With all the bad or negative publicity, self regulation does not go well. We need the government to have a say in the regulatory process. SAICA is proposing an oversight bidy where members of the profession and the government participate. We can't be a referee and a player at the same time. We need outside regulation because we cannot afford to be seen to be just a club, "he said.

Other issues under consideration were alumni joining client firms to take up executive positions, and the possible three-year rotation of auditors, he added.

With acknowledgements to Lloyd Coutts and Business Report.