New financial management system effective Friday

Dodowa (G/A), Aug. 30, GNA - Effective next Friday, the Controller and Accountant General's Department would make functional an integrated financial management system that would ensure effective service delivery in the public sector.

The new system, the Treasury Realignment Process and the Budget Public Expenditure Management System (BPEMS) will ensure that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) have specific treasuries. Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, announcing the measures at the launch of the new system, noted that the current process of accessing and disbursement of Government funds would be drastically shortened.

The Treasury Realignment system would ensure the reporting on all sources of funds under the supervision of the head of MDA, additionally budgetary allocations shall be transferred to cost centres within the MDA's directly.

Mr Baah-Wiredu said the shortened process would have positive effects of time saving and transitional cost while ensuring prompt payments to clients.

The new system is part of Government's efforts to reform the public sector financial management system. Quoting the 2006 Budget Statement, Mr Baah-Wiredu said: "The nation is on course to adopt a business like approach in the governance of this country thus Ghana Incorporated."

He mentioned that the new system would cover the consolidated fund;, internally generated funds and donor funds and would be an improvement over the former system where the treasury system covered only the Central Government's budgetary allocations. He cautioned MDAs to stop employing their own accounting staff since it was legally unacceptable. They should direct their request to the Controller and Accountant Generals' Department to provide the requisite staff. Mr Baah-Wiredu said the Government ought to have an edge on the curtailing of corruption in any form and that could be realized with a monitoring system capable of policing the system by taking due diligence to ensure value for money.

"As stakeholders, we all need to work together to enhance and sustain the financial reforms. It behoves all to complement Government efforts to secure prudent fiscal and economic management aimed at engendering effective and efficient transactions," he said. Mr Christian Sottie, Controller and Accountant General, noted that the department's innovation had given birth to the Treasury Alignment Concept.

He said the new system sought to save about 136-man year every year, explaining that people spent a lot of time chasing their monies in Accra under the centralized system and added that the time spent could be used productively.

Under the new system, the Integrated Payroll Processing II, became active and was used to pay salaries of some sectors from June 2006. Mr Sottie commended the staff of the Department for their hard work in making the new system a reality and said discipline had been enhanced and the staffs were more responsible reducing incidence of corruption and fraud drastically.

"The Controller and Accountant General's Department is one of the best Civil Service Departments under the public sector reform process. The Department can boast of being the first Civil Service organization to install the clock-in-machine to address attendance related problems," he said.

Capacity building was one major problem facing the Department and that there was the need to establish an accountancy training school that would turn out qualified accounting personnel to man the MDAs, Mr Sottie said. Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, who chaired the launch, expressed happiness about the new system, emphasizing that Internally Generated Funds needed to be accounted for and well utilized. He also stressed on the need to monitor the new system to rid the process of fraud and other corrupt practices. 30 Aug. 06