ICAP Raised for Trainee Chartered Accountants in Pakistan in 2026

Chartered accountancy trainees across Pakistan are getting a pay rise — and for many, it comes as a relief after a year of frustration.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) has revised its minimum stipend schedule effective July 1, 2026, raising the top monthly payout for qualified trainees from Rs. 85,000 to Rs. 93,500. It’s an increase of Rs. 8,500, and it touches nearly every stage of training, from the day a student walks into a firm to the final six months before qualification.

For an industry that has quietly absorbed years of criticism over how little it pays the people doing much of its groundwork, the move matters. Whether it goes far enough is a separate question.

What Changed in the New Stipend Schedule

The clearest shift is at the top end. Trainees who have passed all required exams and are within six months of completing their articleship will now earn Rs. 93,500 a month, up from Rs. 85,000 in the July 2025 schedule.

CAF Passed or Equivalent (Training Period: 3.5 Years)

But the increase isn’t limited to qualified trainees. Entry-level stipends have moved too. A CAF-passed trainee starting the standard 3.5-year training route now begins at Rs. 27,500 a month, up from Rs. 25,000.

After clearing four CFAP or MSA papers, the same trainee’s stipend rises to Rs. 38,500, compared with Rs. 35,000 previously. Trainees who qualify but still have more than six months of training left will now draw Rs. 55,000, up from Rs. 50,000.

CAF Passed or Equivalent (Training Period: 2.5 Years)

The pattern repeats across ICAP’s other training tracks. Trainees on the 2.5-year route now start at Rs. 27,500, rising to Rs. 35,200 after one year and Rs. 44,000 after two. SDAI and RDAI graduates — students from specified and relevant degree-awarding institutes — see their starting stipend move from Rs. 31,000 to Rs. 34,100, climbing to Rs. 49,500 by their second year.

Four-year SDAI/RDAI graduates on the three-year training track follow the same upward curve, eventually reaching the same Rs. 93,500 ceiling once qualified and within six months of finishing.

Graduates from other accounting or finance-related degree programmes, training under ICAP’s four-year route, receive an identical structure: Rs. 27,500 on commencement, rising in stages to Rs. 93,500 at the qualified, near-completion stage.

Why This Increase Is Being Noticed

Context matters here. Last year’s notification, effective July 2025, didn’t just fail to keep pace with inflation — in several categories, it effectively restructured stipend progression in ways trainees and industry watchers criticised as a step backward.

Reports at the time noted the new rates for the 2025-26 cycle were lower compared to the previous fiscal year for various categories of trainees.

Firms, facing a wave of trainees qualifying early and drawing higher pay, had pushed back against the cost — and ICAP’s response was to slow the rate of increase for those who qualified ahead of schedule.

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One senior trainee told a Pakistani business outlet at the time that the rates felt disappointingly low given inflation and workload, adding that trainees had little choice but to accept whatever firms offered if they wanted to complete their articleship.

That sentiment wasn’t isolated. When ICAP had revised rates in earlier cycles too, trainees used the institute’s own social channels to vent — pointing out that starting stipends still sat below the government-mandated minimum wage, and questioning why SDAI and RDAI graduates were paid differently from other trainees doing identical work.

The gap between CA trainee pay and Pakistan’s minimum wage has been a recurring sore point. As recently as 2024, commentary in Dawn newspaper noted that the CA stipend for entry-level trainees had fallen to roughly 61 percent of the then-current minimum wage — a ratio that had been closer to 74 percent just a few years earlier, when both figures were lower in absolute terms.

Set against that backdrop, the July 2026 revision reads less like generosity and more like course correction. The Rs. 8,500 bump at the top tier restores some of the ground trainees felt they’d lost, though whether it fully closes the gap with inflation and minimum wage benchmarks is likely to remain a talking point among students and training firms alike.

What It Means for Firms and Students

For training firms — audit houses, tax practices, and corporate finance departments that host thousands of CA trainees each year — the new schedule means higher fixed costs across every stage of articleship.

Firms have previously argued, according to industry sources cited in local reporting, that retaining trainees who haven’t yet qualified is more cost-effective than paying qualified trainees at the top of the scale, which some claimed created a perverse incentive to slow-walk exam progress.

For students, the appeal is more direct. A higher stipend, especially in the final stretch before qualification, changes the financial calculus of staying in articleship rather than seeking work elsewhere.

ICAP’s stipend rates are minimums — firms remain free to pay more, and many do, particularly at larger firms and multinational-linked practices where trainees have previously reported stipends well above the ICAP floor.

The Bigger Picture

Stipend revisions have become something of an annual referendum on how ICAP balances the interests of training firms against the trainees who make up the bulk of Pakistan’s future accounting workforce.

This year’s numbers suggest the institute is leaning back toward the trainee side of that ledger after a contentious 2025 cycle.

Whether Rs. 93,500 as a ceiling, or Rs. 27,500 as a starting point, is enough to keep pace with Pakistan’s cost of living remains an open question — one that trainees, firms, and ICAP’s own council will likely keep debating long after this notification takes effect.

Do you think the revised stipend rates go far enough to reflect what CA trainees actually earn for training organisations?