Source: Government of Ghana
The inaugural conference of the International Federation of Women Accountants (IFWA) has ended in Accra.

The three-day conference, which took place on the theme: 'Building Stronger Institutions to Mitigate Corruption-- Development from the Bottom Up: Role of the Professional Woman', provided the platform for the revival of the activities of women accountants globally and to contribute to the development and growth of national accountants' associations.

The conference also provided the opportunity for women accountants to interrogate and dialogue on practical ways of promoting the anti-corruption agenda, and to empower and challenge the professional woman accountant to champion a corruption-free society through professional capacity building, advocacy, community development and affirmative action.

It was organized by IFWA in collaboration with the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG).

In a key note address delivered on her behalf to open the conference, the First Lady, Her Excellency Dr Lordina Mahama, urged the family, society and the community to help strengthen the individual's resolve to resist, condemn and report corrupt practices while protecting whistle-blowers.

The President of IFWA, Agnes Yeboah, in a welcome address, reminded professional accountants of the agenda of the accountancy profession to fight fraud and corruption as well as their role in protecting the financial, audit and management systems of both private and public institutions.

Ms Yeboah urged all professional accountants to live by the ethics of the profession, which, she said, required high standards of integrity.

In his remarks, Prof. Kwame Boasiako Omane-Antwi, President, Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG), called on chartered accountants to build stronger institutions and make integrity, transparency and accountability essential requirements of efforts to address the global canker of corruption.

Prof. Omane-Antwi stressed the need to reinforce and transform the organizational capabilities of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to safeguard their accountability machinery and guarantee that their integrity was not compromised in order to improve public access to various services.

He, therefore, called for the designation of resilient governance arrangements; improvement in the public financial management of state funds; development of human resource strategies that ensured that workers were retained and motivated; and the development of reliable supply chain systems, and by combining these changes with strategic leadership and country-wide co-ordination.

For his part, Mr Kwasi Gyimah-Asante, Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), in an address delivered on his behalf, blamed banking institutions-- local and abroad-- for facilitating widespread corruption in developing countries by accepting monetary transactions and deposits without questioning their legitimacy.

Mr Gyimah-Asante cited United Nations (UN) and African Union (AU) reports, as indicating that about US $ 148 billion was being stolen from Africa annually by multinational corporations, the business elite, politicians and civil servants, most which stolen monies ended up in banking institutions abroad.

Mrs Justice Asare-Botwe also attributed the scourge of corruption in society to greed, decline in ethics, loss of sense of service, absence of motivation to denounce corruption and the slow judicial process, among others.

She said there was every reason to discourage corruption because of its adverse impact on society, which, she said, included increase in the cost of doing business, inferior quality of and poor maintenance of infrastructure, deficit in taxes due government, poor investor confidence and poor international image.

She, therefore, urged women accountants and all professional accountants to report their suspicions early in order to nip corrupt practices in the bud in their institutions of work.

Source: ISD (G.D. Zaney)

• Ghana