More accountants needed to enhance financial literacy among people

KUALA LUMPUR: The public and private sectors are working together to produce more accountants as it will help build higher levels of financial literacy among the people, said Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani.

“We aim to produce 60,000 accountants by 2020 and right now Malaysia has 33,000 professional accountants, of them 20,032 are chartered accountants,” he told reporters after officiating the Yayasan Peneraju Accounting Symposium 2017.

He said even though Malaysia is progressing well in creating professional accountants, more time is needed to meet the target.

To date, Malaysian professional accountants stands at 33,000, slightly higher than 2015’s figure at 30,000.

Yayasan Peneraju has been tasked with producing 1,000 Bumiputera professional accountants yearly since 2015 in tandem with the government’s aim to achieve a ratio of one accountant servicing 500 people by 2020.

“We are committed to improve the number of accountants and chartered accountants. We also need to focus on the quality of the talents that we produce,” he added.

According to Asia’s population/accountant ratio, Malaysia stands at one accountant servicing 950 people, lagging behind Singapore at 184 and Hong Kong at 195.

Yayasan Peneraju chief executive Raja Azura Raja Mahayuddin said the percentage of Bumiputera accountants stood at 8.42 per cent of the total 20,032 chartered accountants.

“As at today, we have funded more than 3,000 future Bumiputera professional accountants and will continue to produce up to 15,000 professionalaccountants by 2030,” she said. — Bernama