Federal Minister for Education, Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani was the chief guest of the ceremony while Ms Sabah Rashid, Financial Management Specialist, World Bank and ACCA member was the keynote speaker.

The evening commenced with welcome remarks by Mr Haroon Jan, Head of Business Development, ACCA Pakistan. He congratulated the new members on their success and lauded the contribution of their employers including PTCL, Mobilink, UN, WHO, SECP, A.F Ferguson Chartered Accountant & Co., Auditor General of Pakistan, KPMG Taseer Hadi & Co, Ford Rhodes Sidat Hyder & Co, Citi Bank N.A., Wateen Telecom (Pvt) Ltd., Telenor Pakistan (pvt) Ltd and ZONG, for providing them training and development opportunities which enabled them to fulfill the practical experience requirement of ACCA Qualification. Mr Haroon Jan added that, “There has never been a more crucial time for accountants to continue to show their true value. Over the last 18 months, as a systemic banking collapse has evolved into significant worldwide recession in many countries, a range of presumptions about accounting, organisations and society will be questioned – and we believe that the role of the accountant will emerge into a golden age as a champion of sustainable value in business.”

While congratulating the new ACCA members, Mr Bijarani, Federal Minister for Education said that, “I must commend ACCA for adopting a forward thinking approach in designing its curriculum as it ensures that its members perform to the best of their academic and professional abilities and also demonstrate high standards of professionalism and ethics” He added, “As a professional accountancy body, ACCA Pakistan has not just worked to benefit the profession but I see its endeavours closely aligned to the business benefit ensuring that its members enjoy the elevated repute of this professional accountancy body”.

In her keynote address, , Ms Sabah Rashid, Financial Management Specialist, World Bank said that “I can assure you, from my experience, that in line with its commitment to lifelong engagement with members, you will always find ACCA’s policies and initiatives highly important and relevant to your professional needs and aspirations.”

Later, certificates were presented to the successful members by the honorable chief guest and Mr Haroon Jan, followed by a dinner.

Experts around the world believe that the industry is only at its infancy and is poised for phenomenal growth in the emerging markets like India and Pakistan. The reason is the low PC penetration and limited wired internet availability. Mobile web is providing the first internet experience to most users. Mobile operators are accelerating the market growth by providing low-cost reliable internet connections. mKhoj, the leading mobile ad network in Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa recorded a traffic growth of 200% in Pakistan during the 4th quarter of 2008, the highest in the region.

So what makes mobile advertising so tempting? The answer lies in the inherent advantages of mobile as a medium. The reach of the mobile medium is tremendous and has spilled well beyond the larger cities. Brands tie up with ad networks to leverage this ability to reach out to the masses and increase their brand awareness. Mobile ad networks like mKhoj are constantly trying to improve the tools and technology used to provide users with relevant ads. Ads vary depending on the economic status of the user like a watch company advertisement showing an uber-cool trendy watch for youth and more sophisticated elegant watch for an adult. Similarly parameters like operator, demography, handset capabilities, user profile etc provide ways to be able to deliver contextually relevant ads to the users.

This brings us to the question of what more can the industry offer. Naveen Tewari, Founder & CEO of mKhoj believes that ad formats will soon start taking into account the available bandwidth and screen size to improve its display. He says,

“In the very near future campaigns will be more mobile device-centric and will fully leverage the capabilities of the device. For e.g. the ads for a video ad will only be shown on mobiles which have the capability of video streaming and other phones will be served with banner ads. User patterns and preferences would be the key to ad relevance keeping in mind privacy concerns of the users. Imagine passing by a movie theatre and your mobile page will have an ad showing the trailers of the movies running in the theatre… At mKhoj, we believe that the future of mobile advertising lies in creativity, innovation and technology coming together to enhance the user experience.”

The Secretary assures the newly elected Journalist Panel of Government’s cooperation for promotion of Journalists’ safety and wellbeing. Welcoming the newly elected office bearers, Secretary Information expressed the hope that they would continue to strive for the welfare of the journalist community.

He further reiterated the Government’s commitment for the promotion of the interests of the journalist community. “We would extend full cooperation to the newly elected panel and we wish to work in close association with them for creating better working conditions for the journalists” , he added.-SANA