OFS officers attend a training programme at Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 10: Twenty-five OFS (Orissa Finance Services) officers from the state will learn and understand the fundamentals of modern finance at the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB), over a period of two weeks.

Chief secretary of state, Bijay Patnaik, today inaugurated the programme.

The 14-day programme seeks to sharpen the skills of middle and senior level finance officers of the state government with the relevant perspective, tools and techniques needed to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive financial environment.

“The officials will be taught three modules — relevance of EDP (Executive Development Programme), finance for decision-making and demystifying PPP. There will also be an application-based training of MS-Office. We seek to simplify complex financial concepts and make them application-based so that OFS officers can easily adapt and implement them at the grassroots effectively within the administrative structure,” Asit Mohanty, coordinator of the EDP, said.

“The objective of this EDP is to provide the participants an in-depth knowledge and hands on exposure with accounting, financial management and banking or decision making, PPP projects, MS-Excel and Powerpoint applications,” he added.

“This programme will have a highly engaging methodology by the faculty through panel discussions, practical problem solving sessions, case studies, role play sessions, brainstorming sessions and use of audio visual aids,” said Mohanty.

XIMB has in place a management development programme division to contribute to training in modern finance and its use for top level, middle level and other senior executives of government, private and public sector enterprises, banks, insurance companies and financial institutions.