KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian education system needs to instill advanced information and communications technology (ICT) knowledge early, especially in the secondary schools, to ensure that the country produces innovators to cope with the move to promote digital economy.
Former International Trade and Industry Minister, Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz, said it was time for the education system to trigger students to learn the basic grounding of computing and how they could be positive disruptors to the traditional financial system and innovators.
“It is not the religious teaching, moral teaching or national language to be used in the system, more importantly it is the computing and ICT language,” she told a media conference in conjunction with the Asian-Pacific Conference on International Accounting Issues 2017 today.
The four-day conference, attended by 300 international participants from 30 countries, is co-organised by California State University and Unitar International University.
Earlier, in her speech, Rafidah said, the new technology and innovations were needed, especially in leveraging on the available resources.
“This is in order to compete in the marketplace of traditional financial institution in the delivery of financial services,” she said.
Taking financial technology (fintech) as an example, she said, fintech companies were competing directly with existing banks in most areas in the financial sector.
“Among available segments in the fintech services are digital payments, digital insurance, investment and so on. But the new area (that needs to be tapped into) is fintech in Islamic finance, which should be the platform, whereby capital is shariah-compliant,” Rafidah said.
Meanwhile, on the target to produce 60,000 accountants by 2020, which was set by the government to achieve a ratio of one accountant servicing 500 people by 2020, Rafidah said, the nation should have quality accountants rather than focusing on numbers.
“Let’s stop aiming, let’s have quality people, it (number) does not matter, but more importantly well-equipped knowledgeable accountant and backed by ICT, software or hardware,” she said.
Citing Supermax Corp Bhd and Top Glove Corp Bhd as examples, she said, the production of Supermax’s contact lenses and rubber gloves by Top Glove were fully robotics.
“It is parallel with the industry, job creation is not about numbers but quality workers,” she said. - Bernama