Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, has charged members of the Institute of Chartered Accountant of Nigeria, ICAN, to avail themselves of the document generated from Agenda 2050 development plan.
Bagudu gave the advice when Officials of the Institute paid him a courtesy visit at the Ministry’s Headquarters in Abuja.
He advised the Institute to align itself with the national development plan so that provisions in the plan could be inculcated in trainings, programs and other activities of the Institute for greater achievement.
While speaking on the mandate of the Ministry, he stated that it had a clear mandate to cooperate with all groups, particularly, Institutes of knowledge like ICAN, to seek their help in interrogating what the ministry did so that it could do better.
He said that one element of the mandate was periodic assessment of skills gap in the country; which to an extent, showed the relevance of ICAN, as the institute had the responsible of ensuring that accountants possessed required skills to practice in Nigeria.
“Also, ICAN has a prominent role to support the government in terms symposiums and often participates in consensus building which is one of the areas we need,” he stated.
The Minister noted that as a fundamental construct, the ministry was mandated to see how Nigeria could do better economically saying that in doing so, “we need to appreciate the context in which we are doing better; ‘Is our accounting practice and training comparable to those in other countries; are our accounting practices updated from time to time in such that we are not penalizing ourselves? How are our accounting practices shaping up to confront the challenge of digital payment system as well as virtual trainings.’’
He advised that all the institution of knowledge needed to have some meetings where they could all deliberate on what could be done so that the national consensus can be implemented better.
Earlier, the President of the Institute, Mr. Innocent Okwuosa noted that the institute was consistently providing a professional viewpoint on various government economic policies and their potential impacts.
Okwuosa also said that it was determined to collaborate with the Government to redefine national values, economic priorities and resource utilization strategies with the ultimate goal of lifting our citizen out of poverty. Saying that, Accountants were also committed to leveraging their professional expertise to support stakeholders in the informal sector.
He drew the attention of the Minister to the two initiatives of the institute which had impacted significantly, in shaping fiscal policy in Nigeria; The ICAN Budget Symposium and the Mid-Year Economic Discourse. “This two, initiatives, according to Okwuosa, has served to scrutinize the budget and offer well-thought-out recommendations on budget policy directions.
He stated that the reasons for their visit were: to appeal to the Minister to declare their up -coming budget symposium open, to appoint a contact person within the ministry to be their liaison officer on budget symposium and economic discourse, to consider them for board appointments of MDAs under the Ministry and elsewhere in order to help the present administration deliver on its renewed hope; To extend an invitation to the Minister to grace the 53rd Annual Accountant’s Conference with the team ‘NIGERIA IMPERATIVES FOR INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT , scheduled to be held from October 9 to13, 2023 in Abuja. And lastly to kindly request the Ministry’s support in sponsoring all chartered accountants in the ministry to attend Conference.