The Liberian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (LICPA) is a professional association of accountants in Liberia. LICPA is a member body of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). The Institute was established by an Act of the Liberian Legislature. In 2011 a revised version of the act was going through legislative review. Assuming the act is passed, Liberia will adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards. Liberians with bachelor's degrees in Accounting are allowed to sit for examinations to become Certified Accountants. In May 2011 fourteen candidates from LICPA sat an international accounting exam at Cuttington University in Congo Town. Successful students would be eligible for admission as professional members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ghana (ICAG). Later that month a workshop was organized by the World Bank, the Liberian Ministry of Finance and the LICPA to underline improvement in LICPA standards. History The Liberian Institute of Certified Public Accountant (LICPA) is the national Professional Accounting Organization (PAO) of Liberia. It originally came into being, in 1933, as The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Liberia Limited, under authority of an Act of the National Legislature of Liberia in that year. However, for reasons that are not clear, the Institute became and remained inactive and dormant for many years until the early 1980s, when a group of Liberian accountants (principal among them Sam D. Monbo Sr., Edwin Sambola, Emmanuel Shaw, Francis B. S. Johnson, John Bestman, and Wreh Dargbe) took steps to revive the dormant Institute. The institute was reactivated in 1984 and renamed the Liberian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (LICPA) and became a full-fledged member of the Accounting Bodies of West Africa. Sam D. Monbo Sr became the founding President with Edwin Sambola as founding Vice President. However, the efforts to modernize the act of LICPA in so to become an effective PAO of consequence were shortly aborted at the beginning of the 13-year Liberian civil war that started in 1989. In 1994, Mr. Francis B. S. Johnson became president of LICPA while Sam D. Monbo Sr became Executive Director/Vice President. Up to 2011 LICPA leadership led efforts to establish the Institute as an effective, binding PAO supported by government. A New Beginning Effective June 3, 2011, the Government of Liberia passed into law the Liberian Institute of Certified Public Accountants (LICPA) Act, Section 8 of which empowers the Institute to among other things: (1) “regulate the