ACCA Pakistan and ICMA PAKISTAN HOLDS SEMINAR ON PROFESSIONALISM

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) held a seminar with Institute of Cost and Management Accountants for Pakistan (ICMAP) for their members on “Professionalism”. The seminar focused on the importance of ethics as well as incorporating professionalism in any matter of the business and specifically for accountancy.

Haroon A. Jan, Head of Member Affairs, ACCA Pakistan and Mr. Muhammad Abbas started off the seminar by sharing facts and figures about ACCA and ICMAP.

Mr. Peter Large, Executive Director, Governance at ACCA and Mr. Saeed A. Sheikh, Chief Executive, Shaikhain Management & Law Consultants shared their views over the importance of incorporating ethics and professionalism while practicing accountancy.

At the seminar, Mr. Peter Large highlighted what is professionalism, what accountancy profession offers and what does integrity mean in the accountancy profession. He shared that ACCA follows consistency in terms of standards globally being an international body of accountancy. ACCA has an international code of conduct for ethics and technical standards such as financial reporting standards and higher level conduct requirements.

Commenting on the role of an accountancy profession, Mr. Peter said: “The accountant in the workplace acts as a trusted adviser and a critical consultant. It is the duty of a professional accountant to foster appropriate corporate culture and governance. It is very important to not lose sight of the main role of accountancy profession and that is to add value to the business which will help a business grow.”

ACCA and Higher Education Department(HED), Government of Punjab Collaborate to Enhance Curriculum of the Government Commerce Colleges in Punjab

ACCA Pakistan and Higher Education Department (HED), Government of Punjab signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in October 2014 with the aim of providing access to globally relevant professional accountancy qualification to students of the D.Com programme.

The top most objective of HED is to improve the quality of Higher Education in the province. ACCA Foundation Diploma is an international qualification being taught in 190 countries. By introducing this programme, ACCA will play a role in making an internationally recognised qualification accessible to the students at Government Commerce Colleges (GCCs) in Punjab.

ACCA has assessed the D.com curriculum and has awarded exemptions from 2 out of 7 ACCA Foundation Diploma examinations. D.Com students will only have to pass 5 exams to complete ACCA Foundation Diploma. In this regard ACCA and HED have jointly identified 9 out of 118 GCCs, where the ACCA Foundation Diploma qualification will initially be offered. Teaching the ACCA Foundation Diploma will require capacity building of Business, Accounting, Finance and Commerce faculty. Therefore ACCA and HED have selected 97 faculty members from 9 GCCs who will be trained by ACCA experts. The faculty training by ACCA will build their capacity to effectively teach an international qualification.

In addition to this 100 meritorious students have also been selected from 5 GCCs in the pilot stage, who will be put through the programme. ACCA and HED have agreed to offer scholarships to these students in order to make the qualification affordable for them. ACCA will contribute PKR 5.1million and HED will provide PKR9.1 million for this scholarship. These 100 students will only have to pay PKR 5,500 over a period of 1 year.

The MoU is the first step towards supporting relevant public sector educational institutes with education reforms in terms of upgrading their curriculum to international standards, capacity building of their teaching staff thus promoting excellence in the accountancy profession.