With Sri Lanka fast emerging as a global centre of excellence for Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO), a large number of practicing chartered accountancy firms were recently educated by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) together with the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) on how to become global and take advantage in being a player in the FAO sector.
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In an edifying presentation delivered to partners of practicing firms, Mr. Ruwindhu Peiris, Director of SLASSCOM; and Mr. Omar Fatha Rally, General Council Member of SLASSCOM, highlighted that Sri Lanka was identified as a global centre for excellence in financial accounting, and has also being termed as a ‘hidden gem’ in the global offshoring business.
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They noted that Colombo ranked 5th just below Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Manila in the FAO Centres for Excellence category, while Sri Lanka has the second largest pool of UK qualified accountants, after United Kingdom.
The country’s IT/BPM industry is hoping to achieve USD 5 billion in revenue by 2022 and generate 200,000 jobs, with 1000 new startups.
However, during the presentation, Mr. Peiris and Mr. Fatha Rally pointed out that if Sri Lanka was to achieve this target, concerted action was required by government, academia and industry in four key areas. Elaborating the key areas, they added that a breakthrough marketing and promotion was important to reach the objective targets. The other three areas that required focus was; Innovation in talent supply and quality, world class business environment and infrastructure, while the fourth area being unleashing innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity, all which were key areas that would help propel Sri Lanka further as a FOA centre of excellence.
Meanwhile, in an effort to help Sri Lanka achieve its FAO targets, CA Sri Lanka and SLASSCOM has jointly set up a FAO task force which paves the way to help recognize and enable practicing firms and local providers of accounting and finance services having good potential to leverage on their current infrastructure, capabilities and networks to do global outsourcing, and make a mark in the FOA landscape.
