stakeholders. this will ultimately protect the interest of customers, employees, directors, stakeholders and avoid any unwarranted action from the law enforcing / other agencies. the report of the secretarial audit will need to be annexed with the board report. the board of directors in their report to shareholders will need to explain any qualification / remark made by the company secretary in practice in the secretarial audit. 16. the secretarial audit is intended to be a detailed and meaningful exercise conducted by a professional to verify compliance with provisions of various laws applicable to a company. it is you, practicing company secretaries who will have the responsibility to conduct these audits for which you will have similar powers and rights as statutory auditors. in fact, practicing company secretaries will form part of the key management personnel ( kmp ) of certain class of companies whose appointment, remuneration and removal can only be effected through board resolutions. given the significance of the position and the work involved in the audits, it will be important to ensure that practicing company secretaries inculcate the required expertise and knowledge to conduct these audits diligently and with bis central bankers ’ speeches integrity. this will benefit the company management, government authorities, regulators, investors as well as other stakeholders with positive effects spreading to the economy. corporate social responsibility 17. “ the price of greatness is responsibility ”, winston churchill often used to say. there is no reason why it should be any different for companies as well. a new initiative that has been put in place under the ca 2013 relates to corporate social responsibility ( csr ) of companies. under the act, every company with net worth of rs 500 crore or more, or turnover of rs 1, 000 crore or more or a net profit of rs 5 crore or more during any financial year will need to set up a csr committee, which will, inter alia, recommend to the board an appropriate csr policy, indicate the csr activities that the company will undertake and recommend the amount of expenditure to be incurred on the activities. boards of csr companies will need to ensure that at least 2 % of the average net profits made during the three immediately preceding financial years are utilised for csr activities, giving preference to local area and areas around where it operates. in case of non - fulfilment of csr spending, the reasons will need to be indicated in the report of the board in a “ comply or explain ” approach. the csr policy

sectors – both retail and industrial – and incremental lending has been much diversified compared to in the mid – and late 1990s, the retail credit as a proportion of gdp has remained quite low ( table 2 ). with the low existing penetration levels and the fact that more than 30 per cent of indians who are below 15 years of age, will enter in the age group of 15 – 64 years over the next 5 to 10 years, the structural opportunity for banks is evident. the younger generation is far more open to consumer loans, financial products like insurance, mutual funds and wealth management and thereby offers a much bigger revenue base for financial - service providers. although significant financial deepening has been taking place in indian economy over the years as seen from the deposit - gdp ratio, bank assets - gdp ratio and credit - gdp ratio, the low levels of penetration in india can provide a medium term structural growth driver for banks. a noteworthy feature discernible in the indian context is that the rise in indicators of financial deepening takes place along with a noticeable rise in the domestic savings rate. this has to be seen in the backdrop of financial sector reforms, rise in total factor productivity and investment boom which has led to acceleration in the growth performance. low dependency ratio and saving nexus in the recent years, a virtuous cycle of growth, saving and investment has been in operation ( table 3 ) and is likely to continue in the near to longer - term being contributed by demographic dividends and decline in dependency ratio. these factors will facilitate both rise in saving and capital formation and are expected to further reinforce the virtuous cycle of growth in future. the existing studies on india suggest a near one - for - one relationship between the dependency ratio and national savings. according to recent studies ( goldman sachs 2007 ), 1 percentage point decrease in the dependency ratio adds 0. 8 per cent to the national saving ratio. rodrik and subramanian ( 2004 ) used estimation results by mulheisen ( 1997 ) on india's consumption behaviour, which shows a one - to - one relationship between the dependency and saving ratios. accordingly in india, a fall in dependency ratio from 37. 1 per cent in 2006 to 34. 6 in 2011 and 31. 7 per cent in 2026 will result in rise in saving from the present level of 37. 7 per cent in 2007 – 08. section 2 : a projection of housing and education loan requirement the vast business potential for banking can be ascertained from a