Tema, (Greater Accra) 24 Feb. '99,

Mr Emmanuel W. Ofoe, Tema Municipal Co-ordinating Director, today called on heads of government departments and accounting officers to ensure that government accounting systems conform to the new Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). He said under the MTEF, items previously numbered one to nine have now been merged into only four items - personnel, administration (overhead cost), services and investments. Mr Ofoe was speaking at the opening session of a two-day workshop on the MTEF organised for heads of departments and accounting officers drawn from the Tema Municipality and the Dangme East, Dangme West and Ga districts. The workshop, meant to equip them with new accounting procedures in accordance with the MTEF, forms part of the Public Financial Management Reform Programme (PUFMARP). Mr Ofoe said the primary objective of MTEF is to ensure that policies of ministries, departments and agencies of government conform to national priorities. He said the MTEF seeks to establish the linkages between recurrent and development budget and eliminate the relative lack of transparency in the management of the budget. Mr Ofoe noted that before the inception of the MTEF, budgeting was just a little better than intelligent guess work with ill-supported justifications. He reminded them that the success of the MTEF requires dedication and co-ordination of the work of accounting officers, development planning officers and budget officers. This is because it is the sum total of the inputs of these units which go to produce the final budget estimate of every organisation. Mr Joshua K.K. Somuah, Tema Municipal Finance Officer who is also a resource person for the seminar, said the MTEF system would allow the review of priorities in the preparation of development budgets. It will also address the weaknesses in the previous system of budgeting and also address the unilateral freeze imposed on expenditures during the financial year. Mr Somuah said previously budgets were prepared annually but under the MTEF, every institution will have a three-year "rolling" budget, which encourages planning ahead, transparency and the solution of problems with team spirit. The MTEF implementation training workshop will discuss topics including strategic planning, new budget classification, new budgeting and accounting codes, preparation of cash flows and budget implementation rules.