China's accounting industry set to double by 2016

The annual revenue of China's accounting sector will likely double in the next five years from 44 billion yuan ($6.9 billion) in 2011, mainly due to strong growth of domestic firms, Chen Yugui, secretary-general of Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants, said on Monday.

According to the table for the top 100 accounting firms in China ranked by the CICPA, revenues of the 100 largest domestic firms grew 20 percent year-on-year in 2011 to 27.9 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, the industry's income grew by more than fourfold from a decade ago, when the CICPA's table was first published, and Chen said he was confident the figure would double in the next five years.

By the end of 2011, there were 7,976 accounting firms in China employing nearly 97,510 certified public accountants.

Domestic companies reported faster growth last year, with the revenues of the top 10 domestic firms growing 38 percent year-on-year in 2011.

By comparison, joint ventures set up by the "big four", namely KPMG, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have only seen their incomes increase by 6 percent in the Chinese market.

Chen said the difference was mainly due to the global economic downturn. Meanwhile, mergers between several domestic firms helped them grow.

"But there are still problems that have been identified with domestic firms, such as vicious competition with low prices," Chen said, adding that the CICPA will intensify its monitoring of the accounting sector in the future.