ACCA offers to help meet demand
Published on: Friday, October 24, 2014
KOTA KINABALU: There is a global demand for professional accountants and Malaysia needs 60,000 by 2020 – or 30,000 more within the next five years.President of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Anthony Harbinson (2014-2015) from Belfast, Northern Ireland, attributed this demand to the Government' Transformation Programme (GTP). "There is a shortage of professional accountants in Malaysia. "You have such dynamic economies but you don't have the accountants. A lot more money is pouring into Sabah and foreign investors are bringing more growth to the State.
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And that's why we are trying to provide the accountants for these markets," he told Daily Express in an exclusive interview, Thursday.Harbinson, who is on his maiden visit to Malaysia, assured that ACCA would work very closely with the Government and with local bodies such as the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA), Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA) and others to try and drive that anticipated growth. "We (ACCA) have to collaborate with learning providers because we actually need the graduates with qualifications through the appropriate examinations. "ACCA itself does not do teaching, so we work with 24 approved training providers in Malaysia comprising colleges and universities.
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But we don't have one in Sabah to produce qualified accountants," he lamented.In this regard, the World President said ACCA would be happy to work towards setting up a college in Sabah or work with Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) provided their degree programmes in accountancy are aligned to approved courses and that the syllabuses are the same.
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"What we are trying to do is to get a learning provider who is already established to set up facilities in Sabah to train people locally. Not everybody can afford to travel to other parts of Malaysia or Singapore or Britain or Ireland for training in accountancy," he said.Asked whether Malaysia is a slow in meeting the target of 60,000 compared with other countries, Harbinson said :"Every country starts from a different footprint. In China, we were told they need 10 million more accountants against a population of 1.7 billion."Tourism is one of Sabah's main economic drives, apart from agriculture."You have got the biggest mountain in Southeast Asia and you have got all the coral reefs and islands. Our (ACCA) Deputy President is from Sabah, Datuk Alexandra Chin. She told me how beautiful and wonderful Sabah is."Chin will become the World President next year making her the first Malaysian woman, and only the third woman accountant in the world to hold the high-profile post.Harbinson is also Northern Ireland's Director of Safer Communities in the Department of Justice.On another note, Harbinson said he had heard about the kidnapping incidents in Sabah and the Commonwealth Office had put up a warning not to travel too far from Sabah towards the east."But I come from a country that has terrorism for the last 50 years, and had terrorism for 700 years before that as well. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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