A two-day pre-assessment workshop of 2012 Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability Assessment (PEFA) aims to provide a general understanding of the country’s public financial management systems opened in Accra on Tuesday.
The workshop will provide senior officials in ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), development partners and think-tanks in-depth understanding of the PEFA assessment tool with a clear appreciation of both the strengths and weaknesses in the status of public financial management processes and practice for the country.
Mr Enoch Cobbinah, Chief Director Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning said although the government continue to strive to improve Public Financial Management (PFM) systems to enhance provision of key public services, internal reviews, assessments and studies had shown that challenges to the PFM systems undermines government's ability in service delivery.
Some of the challenges include need to improve tax administration to increase tax collection, a budget which is overly detailed and cumbersome to prepare.
He said there is the need for a prudent and efficient expenditure management system as well as compliance to effective commitment control mechanism and the system to improve cash management to ensure timely release of funds to MDAs.
Mr Cobbinah said to address the challenges; government had embarked on major reforms such as the integration of the former Revenue Agencies under the Ghana Revenue Authority.
He said the reforms is to improve tax administration in the collection of the country's revenue, the passage of the Local Government Service Act, which paved the way for the fiscal decentralisation process and other interventions in the area of aid on budget and public investment programme.
Mr Simeon Kyei, Director of Budget, said PEFA assessment over the period 2006 to 2008 and 2009 showed an improvement in 10 areas; weaknesses in four and 17 were unchanged.
He said improvements were shown in the areas of comprehensive information included in the budget, public access to key fiscal information, orderliness and participation in the annual budget process.
Slippages and weaknesses were in the areas of aggregate expenditure out-turn compared to original budget, quality and timeliness of in year budget reports and legislative scrutiny of the annual budget and audit reports.
Mr Kyei said the 2012 PEFA would focus on building capacity within the MDAs.