Six accounting students in UGM received Book Prize Awards from the ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) worth a total of £ 600 (six hundred pounds). The ACCA is a global body for professional accountants headquartered in London, UK. The awards were received in the form of vouchers to purchase books to support their studies and were presented by Mr . Mulyadi Setiakusuma as the Head of the ACCA Indonesia, on Friday, March 28, 2014.

The Accounting Department, UGM was chosen by the ACCA for the awards as the department is recognized as a leading institution that provides quality accounting education in Indonesia. The recipients were selected based on the grade point average (GPA) during the study in the Department of Accounting and their organizational experiences in campus. To participate in the selection, students must have a minimum GPA of 3.75. Students who received the awards are as follows (in the order of the size of the award): Lay Monica Ratna Dewi, Angga Dwi Putra, Aldo Egi Ibrahim, Lulu Permata Sari, Abubakar Adny, and Hary Kurniawan. Lay Monica Ratna Dewi, the number one winner, is a third year student with a GPA of 3.99 and a member of the team from FEB UGM that won the first prize in "the Spring 2014 SolBridge Asian Thought Leaders Case Competition" organized by SolBridge International School of Business, South Korea, 22-27 March 2014.

In addition to presenting the awards, Mr. Mulyadi Setiakusuma also delivered a public lecture to students on the theme "The Importance of International Qualification in Facing Global Economic Competition" in the Audio Visual Room FEB UGM. In the lecture Mr . Mulyadi Setiakusuma conveyed some of the challenges faced by Indonesia, including its accountants, in the face of global economic competition. In addition, he also pointed out a range of competencies that must be maintained by Indonesian accountants to cope with the globalization. If the accountants in Indonesia are not ready, for example to face the ASEAN Economic Community which allows mobilization of accountants in the ASEAN region, then it is likely that our accountants will become mere spectators in their own country.

Mahfud Sholihin, Ph.D. as Chair of the Department of Accounting explained that the Book Prize Awards and the public lecture also mark the beginning of a cooperation between the Department of Accounting and the ACCA. He explained that alumni of the Accounting Department get an exemption for some modules if they want to earn certifications from the ACCCA. That is, several courses in the Department of Accounting are considered equivalent to the ACCA materials so that alumni of the Faculty of Accounting Department do not need to be tested again. "This shows that the quality of the Department of Accounting is recognized globally," he said.

Source: Mahfud/FEB