With the centre of global economic focus moving east with major contributions to the global economy coming from India and China, there is a definite edge for Sri Lanka, according to some education experts.
“Sri Lanka has a place in this equation,” Suthesh Balasubramanium, Chairman CIMA Sri Lanka Governance Board said, adding that Sri Lanka has made a name for its human talent.
While delivering the inaugural address at the CIMA Corporate Partner Launch 2010 programme he said that the biggest factor that contributed to India’s influence in the global economy today is their human talent. “China is consciously developing this talent. Africa and Asia hold close to 60% of human talent which is under the age of 19.
In the next 15 years it is projected that several million Africans will be urbanized. China is expected to urbanize over 20 million people each year for the next 15 years. This is an unbelievable scale of urbanization in the history of humanity. The message of this future trend is that the talent that is required to support the global economical activity will come from this part of the world,” he said.
He said that in this light, if ‘we’ as a nation do not provide global skills to our youth, ‘we’ as a nation are bound to be ‘outcompeted’ in the global arena. “CIMA is (probably) the only accountancy qualification with business focus. CIMA’s influence in the world’s leading corporates over decades and in particular in Sri Lanka over the past 40 years is the credential for the applicability of CIMA’s curriculum to an ever changing business world,” he said.
He said that corporates as good citizens do have a role to play in developing the talent of Sri Lanka to the future, and the Corporate Partner Programme is collaboration with such cause.
“Professional institutes such as CIMA also play a key role in building professionals and developing talent for the nation,” he noted, adding that this partnership will serve this common objective.
Wijeya Newspapers, Associated Motorways, Cargills, People’s Bank, Glaxo SmithKline, Aitken Spence, Hayleys, Lankem, HNB, CIC, Commercial Bank, Sampath Bank, Finlays, MTV, Union Assurance, HSBC, Sri Lanka Telecom and John Keells Holdings are among CIMA corporate partners. |