FINANCIAL AND MONETARY AFFAIRS
encouraged debtors to resolve their problems by individual voluntary arrangements without having to become bankrupt, and substantially simplified procedures under the ordinance.
During the year, the court made 346 receiving orders, 547 bankruptcy orders, 10 interim orders regarding individual voluntary arrangements and 723 winding-up orders. The assets realised by the Official Receiver during 1998 amounted to $107 million, while $62.47 million in dividends were paid to creditors in 208 insolvency
cases.
Professional Accountancy
Hong Kong had 14 819 registered professional accountants at the end of 1998. Of these, 2 536 were certified public accountants (CPAs) or public accountants (PAs) who are in public practice and entitled to perform statutory audits. There were 930 CPA firms and 40 corporate practices in the territory at the end of the year.
The Hong Kong Society of Accountants is a self-regulatory body established under the Professional Accountants Ordinance with a wide range of responsibilities for registering professional accountants, maintaining accounting, auditing and ethical standards for the profession and conducting professional accountants examinations. The Hong Kong Society of Accountants will launch a new professional accreditation system in 1999 and start to run its own training programmes and professional examinations. The Professional Accountants By-laws were amended during the year to allow the Society to raise the basic education requirement for registration as its student to accountancy degree level.