CIMA inducts new Board with Manjula at helm

By Charumini de Silva

Putting top professionals at the helm, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Sri Lanka Division inducted its Board for 2016.

National Insurance Trust Fund Board (NITF) Chairman Manjula De Silva was elected as the Chairman of the CIMA Sri Lanka Board, while Hayleys Industrial Solutions and Hayleys BPO Managing Director Arul Sivagananathan and NDB Bank Senior Manager Mahesha Amarasuriya were appointed as Deputy Chairman and Vice Chairman, respectively. 

De Silva outlined four areas the Board intends to focus on for future expansions and asserted that there were potential new markets for which CIMA could fit into.

“There are four areas I would like to focus on. Firstly, retaining the leadership position in management accounting sphere in Sri Lanka; secondly, to move towards a dominant position in the business education in Sri Lanka; thirdly, to ensure value creation for CIMA stakeholders; and finally to align the Government processes to be in line with CIMA UK,” he pointed out.

In addition he highlighted that special attention would be given to the public sector, which he intends to execute in different ways in future.

Elaborating on the four key areas, he said: “We own the management accounting space and we cannot let anybody come in to that space. The global accounting management principle that has been introduced by CIMA gives us an ideal tool to establish the dominance in the management accounting space here in Sri Lanka.”

In terms of moving towards a dominant position in business education in Sri Lanka, he said that there was potential for a wider market. “This will be an area where we will not only compete with other accounting bodies, but other professional bodies such as marketing, universities and various other educational institutions by way of allowing the strategy of ‘coopetition,’ an effective competition and collaboration.”

Noting that presently most children want to pursue a portfolio of qualifications, he pointed that there was a potential market for CIMA to position itself correctly. “In a way it is like an education supply chain and CIMA has to figure out where we can fit in,” De Silva added.

Commenting on aligning the Government processes to be in line with CIMA, he said: “I think there are few misalignments which need to be addressed. We need to be synced with global standards. This is another priority the Board will focus on during this year.”



Emphasising on expanding CIMA presence in public sector, he noted that the Board wished to increase the members and students while obtaining much-needed technical inputs for the public sector from the CIMA pool of talent.

“This is something that we have been talking for some time, but I don’t think that we have been able to figure out a good model to leverage on this. This is something that we need focus on with the help of the Board in coming year to see how we can harness the resources we have for the benefit of the Government, which is seriously needed in terms of manpower,” he added.

De Silva asserted that this was one of the key proposals he intended to put forward to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the CIMA President in his capacity as the CIMA Sri Lanka Division Chairman. 

CIMA Regional Director Asia Pacific Irene Teng said despite the challenges, they considered 2015 as being more of a learning experience for all of them which helped her team together with the Board members to grow further. 

Noting that it was not just knowledge that equipped a person, but competency and skills, she asserted that they wanted CIMA members to be continually relevant in the industry, to be the leaders in the business world — not just in terms of profit, but with long-term sustainability. 

On behalf of her team she pledged to the Board members and to all the CIMA members in Sri Lanka that together they would conquer the management accounting space in Sri Lanka.

“The Chairman just said that we need to ‘own’ the management accounting space, but I am a bit greedy. I want to ‘conquer’ the management accounting space here in Sri Lanka,” Teng stressed. 

Summing up work completed last year, CIMA Sri Lanka Immediate Past Chairman Vipula Gunatilleke said 2015 was an iconic and an eventful year for CIMA as they completed 50 years in Sri Lanka. 

“Last year was a very challenging year, especially in terms of student registrations. Our student registration grew by over 3,000. However, we recorded 4,000 plus student lapses as an early reaction to the syllabus change and the introduction of the online registration system. But these challenges have been successfully addressed with the help of CIMA UK now,” he added. 

Gunatilleke assured that with Teng’s guidance, CIMA Sri Lanka would be able to mitigate all the risks and student numbers would start to grow with all the initiatives that had been planned for this year. 

CIMA Sri Lanka Division has held three convocations in 2015, witnessing the graduation of over 800 students who completed their examinations. Further, over 425 ACMA and FCMAs received certificates last year.

CIMA Sri Lanka also signed many MoUs with State universities and other State institutions including the Sri Lanka Army during 2015. In addition, to mark the 50th anniversary, CIMA Sri Lanka unveiled a directory that includes 1,200 Sri Lankan member details.