The Malaysian Institute of Accountants today said that
it welcomes and fully supports the Government's call to
increase the number of chartered accountants in the country.
This was in response to the Minister in the Prime Minister's
Department Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop's call for more
Bumiputra graduates to take up professional accounting
programmes.
"To be in line with the Economic
Transformation Programme and navigate
towards becoming a high income nation, we need more
accountants to drive Malaysia's economic growth. Currently
the Institute has slightly over 28,000 registered chartered
accountants in business and commerce, public practice,
public sector and academia. It would be good to see more
Bumiputera chartered accountants as currently they
constitute only 28% of the total membership," said MIA's
President Datuk Mohd Nasir Ahmad.
Datuk Nasir also
mentioned that the Institute has in place initiatives and
proactive measures to encourage the growth in membership of
chartered accountants in Malaysia.
"The membership
drive in MIA encompasses the creation of awareness to
companies and corporate organisations, university graduates
and to the members of the general public.
In relation
to companies and corporate organisations, MIA organises
visits to these establishments to promote and encourage
employers to register their employees as members of MIA.
This would mean that the employer will give the support and
benefit to its employees to pursue a professional
qualification in accounting.
The second component
involves accounting graduates whereby the Institute has in
place the Chartered Accountants Relevant Experience
programme or CARE in short. The programme which sets out a
range of competencies that need to be obtained before
qualifying as a chartered accountant is a systemic
assessment programme which monitors the working experience
of fresh accounting graduates for three years beginning the
day they register as CARE participants. To - date the CARE
programme has successfully recruited 865 members since the
programmes's inception in 2009.
The Institute also
conducts the MIA Qualifying Examination (MIA QE) as an
alternative pathway for accounting, business and finance
graduates who do not possess the required qualification as
stated in the Accountants Act, 1967 to qualify as chartered
accountants. This initiative was introduced in 2003 to
enable more individuals to become qualified chartered
accountants in Malaysia. |
