26 Feb 2013

Accountants have been urged to continue to inspire the trust and confidence of the stakeholders if the profession is to remain relevant.

The call was made by the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Kenneth Matambo at the official opening of the 20th Annual Conference of the East and Southern African Association of Accountants General (ESAAG) in Gaborone on Monday.

Mr Matambo said professional accountants had a role to play in capacity building in Africa, including the development of capital markets and public sector accounting, hence the need to inspire the trust and confidence.

However, he said several challenges had emerged in recent years, which if not effectively addressed could erode that confidence. One of the challenges, he said, was that of competence adding that with the growing complexity of the financial sector and the emergence of new and sophisticated financial instruments, the knowledge base of the profession needed to keep pace with the emerging practices and innovations.

Another challenge that the profession needed to reckon with, he said, was globalization, adding that countries could no longer afford to remain isolated in so far as their operating and legal systems were concerned.

For the accounting profession, Mr Matambo said it was reflected not merely in international accounting and auditing standards but also in a number of other areas such as education and ethics.

He noted that the other challenge was that of information and technology saying in the past, one of the main objectives of audit was ensuring the arithmetical accuracy of financial statements.

However, he said the main task had now shifted to judgements of value and to discharge the task, auditors had to demonstrate much higher levels of maturity, integrity, independence and balanced judgement.

Nonetheless, Mr Matambo said most of ESAAG countries were progressing well in their endeavour to reform their public financial management system.

"While some countries have made strides in recent decades in making budget documents more accessible to both legislators and the general public, efforts to introduce such reforms were often not successful in other countries," he said

He said Botswana like many ESSAG members have recognised the value of information and communications technology in driving the country to attain its aspiration of prosperity for all by putting in place national Information and Communications Technology Policy (Maitlamo) in 2007.

Mr Matambo said e-government services range in complexity from basic access to public information, to radically re-designed public processes; hence it offered the opportunity to innovate. ENDS