BHUBANESWAR: Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday exhorted chartered accountants (CAs) to leverage technology to promote financial literacy among common people to enable them to make informed decisions on their present and future needs.
Inaugurating a three-day national CA conference with the theme ‘Samvabana: CA Profession in Digital Era’, organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) here, Sithraman said people realised the real strength of digital platform during the Covid-19 pandemic while staying at home.
With financial details of registered companies available in public domain, even small retailers who found that the rate of interest offered by banks and other financial institutions on their deposits was not encouraging started investing in the stock market and mutual funds despite being aware of the risks involved.
Appreciating the financial and tax literacy drive, launched by ICAI from July 1, 2022 to educate the common man about financial planning and tax-related matters, the Finance Minister said the “Vittiya Gyan” launched in 12 different languages is not enough as a vast majority of the population of the country still speaks in multiple dialects.
Referring to the two primer books on Kui and Desia she released before attending the conference, Sitharaman said words like ‘Vittiya Gyan’ are too tough to understand for south Indians. She urged ICAI to run its financial literacy campaign in more regional languages so that the campaign can reach wider sections of the population which plays a major role in fostering economic growth of the country.
“Align your students with global practices especially in their own languages in line with the New Education Policy (NEP) to enable them compete at international level. You better know how to set up standards for the future generation,” she said. The Finance Minister appreciated the measures taken by ICAI through its various committees for capacity building of vast number of enterprises in the sector.
Describing CAs as catalysts in economic growth of the country, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan appealed them to assist the state government for better utilisation of funds received from the Centre. He said the state has received over Rs 18 lakh crore during the NDA government in the last nine years as compared to Rs 3 lakh crore during the UPA government.
Chairman of the organising committee Rajib Sekhar Sahoo made an appeal to ICAI president Aniket Suni Talati to open a centre of excellence of the institute in Odisha to which the later said he will take up the matter with the ICAI council.