Industry body FICCI has snapped an eight-year-old partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers for its annual media and entertainment sector survey , a chamber spokesman said on Thursday. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the consultancy whose auditing unit Price Waterhouse is in the dock for clearing the books of scam-tainted Satyam Computers , said it was unaware of any such development. “We have not received any communication from FICCI on the matter. As far as we are concerned, we are the knowledge partners for FRAMES — the annual media and entertainment summit that brings out the report,” a PwC spokesman said. “We have now partnered with KPMG for the event,” the FICCI spokesman told ET. While it was not immediately clear if the Satyam fiasco had any bear-ing on the FICCI move, sources in the entertainment industry said doubts have been raised before about PwC’s annual projections. “Questions on PwC numbers were being raised by Film Federation of India (FFI) members even before the Satyam scandal,” said an entertainment industry representative who asked not to be named. Said FFI secretary general Supran Sen: “It is true that some members of FFI have raised objections to the PwC report and they believe the PwC numbers are not correct. FFI is investigating the matter and a detailed study on the authenticity of the PwC numbers is being conducted.” FFI, the umbrella body of the film industry , also represents close to 50 trade bodies including producers, distributors , studio owners and theatre owners as its members. In its FRAMES report released in 2008, PwC had estimated that the Indian entertainment and media industry would touch Rs 1,15,700 crore by 2012 with a compounded annual growth rate of 18% between 2008-12 . The report had pegged the size of the industry at an estimated Rs 51,300 crore in 2007, up from Rs 43,800 crore the previous year. – www.economictimes.indiatimes.com
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