Re-imagine the world of tomorrow

The inauguration of the 29th National Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka was held last Thursday night at the Cinnamon Grand hotel highlighting the theme ‘Re-imagine- Creating a Successful Business in Challenging Times by Thinking Differently’.

Starting off his address the Chief guest at the event High Commissioner of India Mr. Alok Prasad said it was time to “Re-imagine what the world of tomorrow will look like,” and went on to say that it was important to firstly reconsider our attitudes in the past in order to reassess and thereby rectify our mistakes as well as correcting our past imaginations or predictions of the future. He explained how at the time the soviets fell the whole world expected America to become a dominating empire much like the Roman Empire. However recent events have shown that this empire has now crashed.

Mr. Prasad said he believed that, “one steady inescapable trend ignored by the whole world had been Asia. Today, however India and China have become two giants to be reckoned with.” He predicted that the years to come would be the “coming Asian Century.”

The Chief Guest also believed that it was more a “re-emergence of India and China” as opposed to an emergence. Since in the past, prior to colonial times, over 75% of the worlds GDP was from China and India. He said that perhaps the re-emergence of Asia was a “correction of the anomalies of the colonial period.”

Mr. Prasad went on to say that none of the development or dominance we seek will “come to us automatically” we would have to work for it and deliver on the promise that Asia had great potential. However he did admit that the Asian regions “progress towards inter-connectedness was dissatisfactory,” and that considering other region our trade of was “insufficient in terms of cultural knowledge and monetary trade,” and are more likely to go outside of the region for commercial trade. Nevertheless India and Sri Lanka was sufficiently connected as evidence to his fact 70% of the goods in and out of the Colombo port were to and from India. Drawing upon the words of the Chairman of the 29th National Conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka, Mr. Sujeewa Rajapakse, that Sri Lanka was “no longer India’s little brother but its Twin brother.”

Former Precedent Partner of KPMG Ford Rhodes Thornton and Co. Mr. Ranjan Asirwatham was the keynote speaker for the evening. Mr. Asirwatham spoke on the growth of the accounting industry and the importance of an ACCA qualification.

The conference’s Technical sessions are conducted over two days by a group of eminent and respected corporate personalities through six main presentations titled ‘creating opportunities’, developing a blue ocean strategy’, the differentiating factor’, ‘ navigating the vortex’, ‘forward focus’ and numbers to strategy’.