The  Confederation of Asian & Pacific Accountants (CAPA), together with the World Bank, jointly organised and staged the second Financial Reform for Economic Development in Asia Forum (FRED 2). This high-level regional forum was held on 17-18 May 2016 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with aspects sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Malaysia.

FRED 2, themed ‘Driving Future Outcomes from Past Experience’, focused on the public sector in Asia and explores how improved public financial management contributes to strengthening the public sector, improving government accountability and transparency, thereby supporting poverty reduction and economic growth. The concept for the forum is to create a flagship event for relevant stakeholders, bringing together policy and decision makers from across the region, and their influencers, to focus on matters where reform may be needed to improve private or public sector accounting, reporting or auditing in order to effect change.

“Similar events occur in other areas of the world and CAPA was approached by the World Bank in late 2013 to jointly stage such an event, thus the first FRED Forum was held in 2014 in Sri Lanka which focused on the financial reporting supply chain,” said CAPA President, Jackie Poirier. “The focus for FRED 2 is on the public sector because the accountancy profession must be increasingly active to promote accountability and transparency in the public sector and because we need to ensure that professional accountancy organisations serve the public sector, and the accountants and auditors that work in it,” she added in her welcome remarks.

“CAPA is very pleased to be chosen to partner with the World Bank in staging the FRED Forums as we have established strong working relationship with many of the Bank’s representatives over the years,” CAPA Chief Executive, Brian Blood, commented with a note of appreciation. “This second forum, with a focus on the public sector, is indeed very apt because improving public sector financial management is also a key strategic objective for CAPA, and many of our activities focuses on this area,” he added.

Attended by over 200 participants from more than 30 countries, whereby a little over one third were leaders from the accountancy profession, one third were officials with leadership roles in the public sector and the remaining one third were largely senior representatives from the World Bank and other development partners. There was also a significant number of representatives from supreme audit institutions.

CAPA would like to take this opportunity to thank the World Bank, especially the South Asia and East Asia Pacific region teams, for presenting this very meaningful and exciting opportunity. We would also like to thank all the sponsors and supporters, with a special mention of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) for providing assistance where required. We are also very grateful to all the speakers and rapporteurs whom made time available from their busy schedules to share experiences and perspectives with the participants. And finally, a big thank you to all the attendees for their active participation and for including this event in their busy work schedules. Your involvement and contribution made this event possible and enabled a rich experience for all who attended.

More information, including the program, speaker profiles, a summary of the forum outcomes, selected presentations and photographs can be accessed from this section: Events > Past Events > Financial Reform for Economic Development in Asia – Public Sector Forum 2016.