The CEO of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG) has urged accountants to uphold the tenets of professionalism to ensure investors do not lose confidence in the economy.

Kwasi Agyemang noted that accountants are considered to be gatekeepers of public funds or funds of investors therefore standards for recording transactions, keeping transactions, and reporting transactions must be encouraged to promote transparency.

"This critical role is played to protect the investors’ money, if investors know that accountability is key, there are standards in the system, integrity and independence is assured, they will troop to this country where they think their investment is secured”, he added.

Mr Agyemang said this at a professional networking event for the ICAG Professional Diploma Programme, an initiative that aims at deepening the knowledge and competencies of members in specialized areas.

The five-week intensive training programme touched on areas including; IT Audit; Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG); Advance Business Analytics; IFRS, and IPSAS.

He underscored the need for accountants and other professionals to upgrade their skills to perform more effectively.

He added, “The accountancy profession now has new standards and professionals must build capacity on new trends to be able to understand the contents of these standards."

Akua Amoah-Boateng, Partner at Resource Alliance, also noted that the ESG course highlighted how all stakeholders could support making the environment a healthy place, not just the environment but how companies can work to support members of the organization.

ESG is a set of standards that checks how the operations of companies impact the environment, how the employees are treated, and how the companies uphold corporate governance.

Madam Amoah-Boateng said much effort was needed to be able to meet the requirements, saying “there are a number of risks we will like to mitigate and we need to incorporate these actions in our day-to-day lives”.

“At Resource Alliance we offer a number of services so basically as we work with our various clients we are better placed through this training, to assess how they doing in ESG to be able to make recommendations for how they improve their practices along ESG lines and how they mitigate certain risks”.

She mentioned that ESG non-compliance could lead the company into certain problems and penalties, as such, her Firm’s role would be better at managing and supervising their clients to be more compliant.