CMA Inter Syllabus: Papers 5 to 12 with Section Weightage

Who sits the Intermediate exams

You reach Intermediate either by clearing CMA Foundation or through direct entry. ICMAI allows graduates of most streams, students who have passed CA Intermediate, and engineering students or graduates who meet its conditions to register straight for this level. Once registered, you have seven years to finish this level, and you must register several months before the term you want to write, so check the cut off months published for each June and December session.

Each group can be written on its own or both together in one term. Many students who are still in college choose one group per term to keep the load manageable.

CMA inter exam pattern

CMA inter syllabus for Group I, with weightage

Paper 5: Business Laws and Ethics

• Business laws, 30%: contracts, sale of goods, partnership and negotiable instruments
• Industrial laws, 15%: the labour law framework
• Corporate laws, 40%: the Companies Act from incorporation to meetings and management
• Business ethics, 15%

Paper 6: Financial Accounting

• Accounting fundamentals 15%, special transactions 10%, preparation of financial statements 20%
• Partnership accounts 20%, lease, branch and departmental accounts 15%, accounting standards 20%

Paper 7: Direct and Indirect Taxation

• Direct taxation, 50%: income tax heads of income, deductions and total income computation
• Indirect taxation, 50%: GST and customs

Paper 8: Cost Accounting

• Introduction to cost accounting 40%: material, labour and overheads
• Methods of costing 30%: job and batch costing, contract costing, process costing and service costing
• Cost accounting techniques 30%: tools such as marginal costing; the curriculum lists the full set

Group II papers and their weightage

Paper 9, OMSM: Operations Management & Strategic Management

• Operations management, 60%: how production and service operations are planned and controlled
• Strategic management, 40%

Paper 10: Corporate Accounting and Auditing

• Corporate accounting 50% and auditing 50%

Paper 11, FMDA: Financial Management & Business Data Analytics

• Financial management, 80%: working capital, capital budgeting, leverage, financing mix and cost of capital
• Business data analytics, 20%, backed by a short tutorial workshop on data analytics tools

Paper 12: Management Accounting

• Decision making tools 30%, standard costing and variance analysis 15%, budgeting and budgetary control 15%
• Activity based costing 10%, divisional performance measurement 10%, decision theory 10%
• Introduction to management accounting 5%, responsibility accounting 5%

The weightage figures above come from ICMAI's own curriculum for the current scheme and tell you roughly how many marks each part can carry in a paper.

Pass marks and the 60 mark exemption

• You clear a group with a minimum of 40 marks per paper plus 50% overall across the papers of that group, that is 200 out of 400.
• If you write a full group and fail it, any paper where you scored 60 or more is exempted for the following three attempts.
• Exempted papers are not written again, but the group aggregate is then worked out on the papers you still write.

The most common way to fail is not a low total but one paper below 40. Paper 7 and Paper 10 are both half and half combinations of two large subjects, which makes them the usual weak spots.

Using the weightage to plan your study

Let the section percentages guide your hours. In Paper 5, corporate law alone is worth 40%, so the Companies Act deserves more time than the industrial laws block. In Paper 11, financial management makes up four fifths of the paper, which means data analytics should be learnt well but briefly. Paper 12 is spread over eight sections, and decision making tools carry the largest share.

Taxation and law papers follow the amendments ICMAI notifies as applicable for each term, so always study from the study material and the applicable amendment list released for your attempt.

Study material and practice papers

ICMAI publishes study material, revision test papers, model question papers and mock tests for each term on its official website. These are written to the exact scheme and should be your main sources. Keep the relevant statutes at hand for law, the current tax rates for Paper 7, and rely on standard textbooks only to practise extra problems in costing and accounts.

Write at least two previous papers per subject by hand under three hour conditions. Costing and management accounting reward neat working notes, which take practice to produce quickly.

How CMA Inter compares with CA Inter

Both are second level professional exams in two groups, but the weight falls differently. The CMA paper set gives costing and management accounting two full papers and adds operations management, while the CA Intermediate syllabus leans more on advanced accounting, audit and tax. If you have just finished the first level, the CMA Foundation syllabus page shows how the basics you studied lead into these papers.