The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has approved a request of the Malaysian Association of Company Secretaries (MACS) for adoption of the Secretarial Standards issued by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) as the benchmark in the development of Secretarial Standards of MACS.

The Secretarial Standards on Meetings of the Board of Directors and Secretarial Standard on General Meetings were approved by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India under sub-section 10 of Section 118 of the Companies Act, 2013 and are in place with effect from 1st July, 2015.

It is a matter of prestige that Indian Standards are to be adopted/benchmarked by a foreign sister institution in the course of formulation of their own similar standards.

Secretarial standards adoption guides MACS to benchmark ICSI norms for board and general meeting procedures. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs approved MACS's request to adopt ICSI Secretarial Standards as the benchmark for developing MACS standards; specifically the Secretarial Standard on Meetings of the Board of Directors and the Secretarial Standard on General Meetings, which were earlier approved under the statutory approval mechanism and effective from 1 July 2015.