Dr. Reema Khalaf, the Jordanian Minister of Industry and Trade, sponsored the graduation ceremony of the first set of students to acquire the Arab Certified Public Accountant (ACPA) certificate.
The ceremony was organized by the Arab Society of Certified Accountants (ASCA).
Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of ASCA, spoke at the ceremony and expressed his joy with this great achievement of the society to graduate this elite group, comprised of 40 students from 8 Arab countries. He said: “The graduation of this group came after continuous work.”
He then talked about the significance of this event for the society since it occurred after quite an effort and in order to fulfill a requisite of the Arab world for qualified accountants, because the Arab region needs about one million qualified accountants.
Then Dr. Reema Khalaf, the Jordanian Minister of Industry and Trade spoke, and relayed her happiness to share this special event with the graduates and their acquisition of the highest professional qualification in the field of accounting. She pointed to the significance of the discipline in relation to its contribution to building the economy. She also talked about the contribution of ASCA as the first Arab institution specialized in the area of accounting qualification. She referred to the speech of the Jordanian Crown Prince Hasan at the opening of the Second International Accountancy Conference and the consideration of society membership as a precondition to practice the profession.
She said: “In this I see a confirmation of Jordan’s vision of the extreme significance of the accounting discipline in laying down the foundations of specialized technical work and its reflections on the general economic movement.”
Also, Dr. Abed Alkharabsheh, Secretary-General of the Audit Bureau talked about the auditing vocation and the role ASCA is playing as a professional Arab establishment by shouldering the responsibility of qualifying Arab accountants technically and scientifically to work as public accountants, especially since this practice used to be monopolized by foreign institutions. He said: “The significance of ASCA’s role is that despite all developments within the law that have taken place in the past four decades, and despite the introduction of advanced accounting systems into the practice and adoption of international accounting criteria, the discipline has still lacked the spirit to adjust quickly to what goes on in the accounting world.”
He went on to say that “hope is hinged on vocational groupings like ASCA, which is at the forefront in developing the occupations of accounting, auditing, financial administration and all sciences that are related to qualifying Arab accountants, in order to have an Arab certified accountant that can keep up with developments.”
The Minister and Secretary-General then distributed the certificates to the graduates.