Mr. Hossain is a Fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB). He is one of the founder partners of this Firm. He did his Bachelor of Commerce (1973) from Dhaka University and became a Chartered Accountant in 1978.
Mr. Hossain has been working as an independent auditor and public accountant for more than forty years. He has extensively worked for the World Bank in preparing Bangladesh country papers on various financial/ economic issues mostly as a member of the World Bank missions. He has in-depth experience of rendering consultancy services in many micro-finance institutions and NGOs in Bangladesh, primarily for the Donors. In addition to working with international consultants in Bangladesh, he has worked abroad in Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Nepal and Uganda.
As a practicing accountant, Mr. Hossain has been active in Assurance Service, Management Consultancy, Financial Consultancy services and Accounting/information system Design/implementation to different local and multinational organizations. His regular professional activities include:
- Assurance Services: Statutory auditing, Internal auditing , Special Audit, Financial review and Integrated fiduciary review to Public Sector Corporations/ companies/ utilities, Banks, NGOs , Donors and Regulatory authorities.
- Management Consultancy: Organisational Systems Review to Assess the capacity of NGO partners, Strategy document preparation for cost sharing/ cost recovery, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) preparation, etc.
- Accounting/information system Design/implementation: Designed the annual financial statements of Union Parishads and the independent audit of Union Parishads by private sector audit firms (World Bank, and UNDP). As National Professional Project Personnel implemented the “Debt Management and Financial Analyses System (DMFAS)” software of UNCTAD in the Ministry of Finance, Govt. of Bangladesh (UNCTAD/Geneva). Worked in design and implementation of a computerised foreign aid monitoring system (IBM S/34) at Ministry of Finance, Government of Bangladesh. The work was a 5 year joint venture with Swedish International Services of Sweden (UNDP/UNDTCD).
Apart from in-country regular working experiences as audit and financial management professional, a brief of his overseas experiences may be found in the following short notes:
- Conducted a four day training course on microfinance audit for the Microfinance Investment Support Facility in Afghanistan (MISFA).
- Was the lead trainer in a five day audit training course in Addis Ababa conducted by the Association of Ethiopian MFI’s (AEMFI, Ethiopia).
- Designed the MIS for the Qinghai (China) Microcredit Project funded by AusAID (Sagric/FDC, Australia).
- Conducted a capacity development workshop on external audit of micro-finance institutions in The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda (CGAP, Washington DC).
- Worked as the financial analyst with a CGAP staff member to appraise the financial and operational performance of Nirdhan, Nepal (World Bank-CGAP).
- Conducted a course on “Introductory Financial Analysis” for Grameen Bank replicators (Cashpor, Malaysia).
- Verified the financial and accounting systems of rural credit operations of Bhutan Development Finance Corporation (BDFC), Thimphu, Bhutan. Commented on the efficiency of the operation as a whole and made recommendations for adjustment (UNCDF, New York).