Cabinet approves new accounting manual for government departments and ministries |01 July 2019

Ms Marengo

A new accounting manual for use by government ministries and departments has been approved by the cabinet of ministers.

The manual, which has been drawn up by the Ministry of Finance, Trade, Investment and Economic Planning, makes provisions for the latest developments and reforms in public finance which have been implemented recently, and which were not covered by the previous manual.

Furthermore, the document establishes new procedures to address challenges highlighted by the auditor general’s report.

Chief accountant of the Treasury, May Paul Marengo, explained that the new manual is to replace the previous one and to document the procedures for use by ministries and accounts departments as a reference and training material.

“The main changes included in the manual is the inclusion of more chapters, for instance on the budget with the new budget that is coming, the manual helps to supplement the guidelines that were established before in terms of how the budget is prepared, how changes within the budget over the course of the budget year is implemented,” Ms Marengo noted.

According to Ms Marengo, one of the priorities of the government is to automate some of the systems and move towards digitisation of payments. Currently, a significant proportion of processes within governmental departments are manual and the new document includes guidelines to establish the systems pertaining to records of transactions, to allow for the generation of reports.

“We are encouraging payments through banks rather than cash payments and cheques and similar for revenue as well, we are also encouraging card payments within government through banks. We have new plans and projects conjointly with the Central Bank Seychelles (CBS), for instance we have Seychelles Electronic Funds Transfer (SEFT) that has been introduced,” she noted.

The government and the department of finance are working on making payments by SEFT to speed up processes. To facilitate this, the government and department of information, communication and technology (DICT) are working on creating an online payment system to enable customers to access services and payments online, for services such as those offered by the department of planning.

Besides making provisions to encapsulate new developments, the accounting manual provides guidelines and procedures regarding donations, internal control measures and government debts.

“In terms of cash and banks, in the auditor’s reports there were certain challenges regarding the procedures and the maintenance of commercial banks so in the manual we have prescribed how to open a government account, how to manage and reconcile to reduce challenges and have more control,” Ms Marengo said.

Among the numerous shortcomings identified in the auditor’s report was the lack of clarity as to the correct accounting procedures, something which the new manual addresses by detailing high-level tasks.

“For example, for accounting officers such as chief executive officers and principal secretaries, the manual actually delegates such tasks to technical staff. It explains to accounting staff how they are supposed to conduct certain transactions, so it delegates the tasks. In terms of payments, the bottlenecks, the manual lays out procedures for payment. The aim is to ensure that the commitment is recorded from the time we are entering into an agreement with the supplier so when the payment is due, we have already committed the amount in the system. These are the things on which we are working with DICT to improve the system to include these elements,” she further added.

In a bid to ensure that all departments and ministries are onboard with the new procedures, the ministry will fully implement the new procedures in a year to two years, in which time training workshops will be held with stakeholders, auditors and ministries to ensure that they are all on board. During the stated timeframe, the government will also engage with stakeholders to update banking information.

The manual will also be used by the auditor general when conducting audits and audit reports for respective departments and ministries.