From left: CA Sri Lanka Secretary/CEO Aruna Alwis, National Conference Committee 2015Chairman Heshana Kuruppu, CA Sri Lanka President Arjuna Herath, CA Sri Lanka Vice President Lasantha Wickremasinghe and National Conference Technical Committee 2015Chairman Nandika Buddhipala


With globalization, liberalization of economies and technological advancements bearing a considerable impact on the world we live in, which has also led to the transformation of businesses across the globe, the 36th National Conference of Chartered Accountants will take the lead to inspire Sri Lankan businesses on the importance of ‘collaboration’ to help foster closer and sustainable partnerships with their service providers, employees and even competitors in order to achieve holistic business excellence. 

The theme of this year’s conference ‘Catalyst 15: Collaborate to Compete’ was unveiled at a press conference organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka), which was attended by CA Sri Lanka President Arjuna Herath, Vice President Lasantha Wickremasinghe, National Conference Committee Chairman Heshana Kuruppu, National Conference Technical Committee Chairman Nandika Buddhipala and CA Sri Lanka CEO Aruna Alwis. 

The conference will be held from November 4 to 6, 2015, at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH), Colombo.
 
Addressing the news conference, Herath emphasised that the majority of the CA Sri Lanka members have gone beyond the traditional accounting roles and has progressed to give leadership across diverse sectors in the capacity as chairmen, managing directors, directors and CEOs. 

“The national conference is a platform that brings together these influential business leaders, who steer businesses both locally as well as overseas,” he said. 
Explaining the rationale behind this year conference, Heshana Kuruppu noted that in today’s complex business environment, there is an increasing demand on finance leadership to play a more integrated role in business. 

“It is not enough to be a guardian of business by fulfilling traditional responsibilities of safeguarding assets, risk management, implementing controls, corporate governance and reporting. Finance leadership is now expected to play a key role in strategic and operational decision-making. In other words, finance professionals are expected to be business partners through finance leadership,” he told the news conference. 

Kuruppu noted that in order to meet these diverse expectations and challenging roles, finance professionals are required to acquire more commercial insight, business knowledge and skill through continuous professional development.

“In this backdrop, we have organised the 36th National Conference of Chartered Accountants, titled ‘Catalyst 2015’, on the theme ‘Collaborate to Compete’. This theme definitely takes us beyond the accounting domain and will provide more business insight to chartered accountants and other corporate leaders who intend to participate,” he added. 

The National Conference of Chartered Accountants recognized as one of country’s biggest and most anticipated business summit will educate the corporate sector on the importance of economic collaboration that can lead to competitive advantage and how companies can achieve excellence through collaborative supply chain models and how the public-private partnership (PPPs) could be deployed as an effective strategy not only to meet the colossal funding requirements of the infrastructure projects but also to ensure technological and efficient management systems. 

Nandika Buddhipala noted that this year’s conference will feature high-profile local and foreign speakers who will shed insights on how continuous collaboration could steer innovation within diverse organisations and how to harness the best talents in organisations, which could ultimately result in organisations producing outstanding results. 

The conference which will consist of two days of technical sessions, will also explore how the collaborative role of a financial professional could accelerate business growth, along with individual professional advancement.  

“We invite our business leaders, public sector and the financial professionals to join us in our efforts to deliberate on ‘Collaborate to Compete’ at the 36th National Conference of Chartered Accountants. Let’s go through our journey starting with economic substance behind the theme together with role that can play in the space of Public and private sector collaboration (PPP), collaborative supply chain, collaborate for innovation, collaboration in HR and the role of the financial professionals towards successful ‘Collaborate to Compete’!” Buddhipala added. 

Over the past 35 years, the conference has built a reputation as a business summit that provokes thoughts and spurs insights into broad economic and business issues apart from its core emphasis on finance-related topics. 

This year the conference will accommodate up to 1500 participants including high-profile business leaders at the venue, while the proceedings of the conference will also be transmitted live via webcast for the convenience of over 2000 overseas and local members of CA Sri Lanka who are unable to participant at the conference physically.