Abul Hashem
Editor
The Guardian

The Financial Management Academy, well-known in its abbreviated name FIMA, passed over a long traversed way to come to its today’s position of success and glory. In the early sixties in erstwhile East Pakistan, Audit and Accounts Training Centre (AATC) was established in 1962 for the training of non-gazetted employees at Dhaka. And AATC is the beginning of FIMA.

After the liberation of Bangladesh, AATC was converted to Audit and Accounts Training Academy (AATA) in 1974 under the Comptroller and Auditor General of Bangladesh and was headed by a Director General and in 1997 AATA was renamed as Financial Management Academy (FIMA). Thus the FIMA started a new journey.

On the threshold, FIMA was designed to train mainly the personnel of the department of audit and accounts, aiming to prepare the monthly and annual accounts of various ministries and divisions. Accordingly, staff and officers of Civil Accounts, Railway Accounts and Military accounts and staff and officers of ten audit directorates including CAG office become the regular participants in the various courses of FIMA.

Gradually, the importance of financial management has increased manifold and become a multi-disciplinary subject for entire domain of public sector. So, the role of FIMA has extended. Now it trains the officers of other ministries and organizations on the different aspects of financial management as per their request. Currently, FIMA is also training the officers of Army, NGO Bureau, BEPZA, Urban Health Care Project and different Ministries.

By conducting training for officers, FIMA is not only building strong financial management in the country but also contributing to establishing good governance in Bangladesh through helping the establishment of transparency and accountability in all spheres of economic and financial activities of the country.

It is another remarkable achievement that FIMA has taken the credit for organizing UK’s Certified Institute of Public Finance and Accounting (CIPFA) course to be conducted in Bangladesh and the FIMA has been declared the centre for CIPFA examination by the CIPFA authorities of UK. In addition to this, FIMA also plays an effective role in organizing course and training arrangement for Bangladeshi officers at Ulster University of UK.

The present management of FIMA, led by Director General Md. Mahtab Uddin who is also a high-profile expert in public financial sector, has been working relentlessly to attain the goals of FIMA in real sense of its foundation. This has attracted us. So, in this issue of The Guardian, we focus on entire activities, facilities, problems, potentials, contributions and future plans of FIMA. We believe The Guardian readers at home and abroad will get immense interest in this issue and the issue will also attract the attention of our policy makers towards FIMA and its further development. Let us hope for the best.