Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants (VACPA) have jointly organized the webinar “Opportunities and solutions for training public accounting at universities in Vietnam”.

The event has focused on discussing opportunities and solutions for Vietnam universities’ public accounting education with the directions of State management agencies, tools from international organizations, and the experiences of universities specializing in public accounting.

Speakers at the webinar. Photo: The Hanoi Times

In recent years, Vietnam’s international economic integration process has been accelerated. Joining international economic bodies and fulfilling commitments with other international financial institutions require Vietnam to provide financial information that is standard, comparable, and internationally recognized, especially in the public sector.

Speaking at the webinar, Dr. Vu Duc Chinh, director of the Accounting and Auditing Supervisory Department under the Ministry of Finance (MoF), shared about Vietnam’s significant progress in promulgating regulations in public accounting towards harmonization with international practices.

He told the participants that the MoF released the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) roadmap to 2023 in June 2019, and the Decision on five Vietnamese public sector accounting standards batch 1 in September 2021.

"The announcement and adoption of the Public Sector Accounting Standards bring benefits to international economic integration as well as enhance the confidence of investors, local and international financial institutions,” Chinh said.

CAPA highlighted its initiatives to help professional accounting organizations improve public financial management. Its report “Extending activities into the public sector" 2021 is about the framework and activities that professional associations can support “Create supply" “Build demand" “Provide opportunity" and “Enhance skills''.

Brian Blood, CAPA Chief Executive said with our mission to enhance the value of the accountancy profession in the Asia Pacific by contributing to the development of Professional Accountancy Organisations (PAOs), CAPA supports and encourages high-quality financial reporting in the public sector: prepared on accrual-based accounting standards and audited based on international audit standards.

ACCA also shared in the webinar their public accounting training experience, and introduced ACCA Certificate in IPSAS, which could help you meet the challenges of implementing IPSAS.“Early this month, we held the 12th ACCA International Public Sector Conference themed “Leading recovery in public finance” – as the annual event that attract over 1,000 leaders from the public sector all over the world, many of those are ACCA members.

ACCA also launched a report on the experience of IPSAS implementation across the globe in 2017 and then introduced a Certificate on IPSAS globally. In Vietnam, we are proud as the 1st global accountancy body present in Vietnam to celebrate the 20th anniversary in 2022,” spoke Renjith Varma, the Porfolio Head, ACCA Mainland Southeast Asia. 

Bonnie Ann Sirois, Senior Financial Management (FM) Specialist, Coordinator for the FM Unit in Pacific, WB, said one of the purposes is to assist countries in developing in-country plans and implementing in-country processes that produce accountants with higher-order skills relevant to their economy’s rapidly evolving needs; and, improve financial reporting, auditing, and regulation.

He said the guide supports transitioning accounting education, training, and certification from a knowledge-based approach to a competency-based approach.