T&T will host the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean's (ICAC) 33rd Annual Caribbean Conference June 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain. The theme is Get Your Game On–Building and Sustaining Caribbean Businesses.At the media launch of the conference on Friday, ICAC president Frank Myers called on accountants to become more involved in the building of Caribbean economies.
"The opportunity is there for the profession to be part of the region's recovery efforts. The exclusion of chartered accountants from deliberations on the economic issues of the region has been nothing short of amazing."It is well recognised that the private sector must be the engine of growth for our economies, we do not seem to be an automatic go-to when these discussions arise. That is surprising given the fact that we are the group of professionals that have the best understanding of commercial activity given our daily interaction with the private sector."
In remarks at the launch, president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of T&T (ICATT), Pria Narinesingh, said there are 3700 ICAC members in the region."Our colleagues in Jamaica are celebrating their 50th anniversary and we congratulate them on achieving this golden milestone. What this means is that the accountancy and auditing profession in the region has had a long tradition made even stronger by the formation of the ICAC," she said.
Narinesingh, who said ICATT is celebrating 45 years of service to the accounting profession, added: "T&T can claim a special bond with the regional body, for it was at a meeting of Caribbean accountants in Port-of-Spain in 1987 that a resolution was passed proposing the establishment of a chartered body for accountants in the Caribbean. "The ICAC was subsequently incorporated in 1988 in Jamaica. Today, membership across the region is about 3,700, 1350 of which are in T&T."
Narinesingh said the conference theme "is really a call to the region's professionals to ready themselves for the challenge of growing viable enterprises in a time when island economies struggle to emerge from the contagion of the 2008 financial collapse.""While the traditional businesses will remain bread and butter, quantum leaps can only be derived from innovative, out of the box approaches that build on the unique competitive advantage of our island states," she said.