Mahinda opens Miloda

Thursday, 31 January 2013 00:24 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Uditha Jayasinghe

In an attempt to increase financial training in Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday ceremoniously opened the Miloda Academy of Financial Studies possessing international-level facilities and built with funding assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Treasury Secretary Dr. P.B. Jayasundera was overflowing with praise for the project, which he described as bringing financial training on par with Harvard to Sri Lanka.

Miloda will primarily function as a training ground for Finance Ministry employees but Dr. Jayasundera reached out to international organisations such as ADB, International Monetary Fund and World Bank as well as universities to link with the Ministry to hold training workshops, seminars and conferences to improve knowledge transfers to Sri Lanka.

“This is a very proud moment for us. I believe that the knowledge we don’t know is greater than the knowledge that we do. Miloda will fill a long-overdue need in personnel training and will facilitate knowledge sharing. It will also take Sri Lanka closer to becoming a knowledge economy,” he said.

He also paid tribute to the past Finance Ministry Secretaries, commending them for carrying out a job that Dr. Jayasundera described as often being “thankless” and spoke extensively about the contributions the institution as a whole had made to the country.

The plush institute was built from part of a loan given to the Government under the fiscal and revenue management reforms that are facilitated by ADB. The total program is US$ 60 million but it was unclear as to what percentage was used to construct Miloda.

Actual figures were not revealed at the ceremony that saw President Rajapaksa inaugurating the facility. A new periodical titled ‘A Nation’s Journey’ was also launched, with the first copy being handed over by Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga to Rajapaksa.

The colonial-era ‘Times Building’ has been renovated and refurbished to house Miloda and Dr. Jayasundera insisted that the developers had worked hard to preserve the 19th century architecture and grandeur of the building while converting the interior into a state-of-the-art academy.

Miloda also houses the country’s first ‘Intelligent Digital Lecture Theatre,’ which allows lecturers to flash questions on the main screen and asks students to input their answers through individual laptops available to them.

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