The Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) is meant to replace all stand-alone legacy Financial Management Systems at the Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs) and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance said GIFMIS also had the possibility of interfacing other systems that need to be maintained; adding that this was to assist in achieving improved comprehensiveness, transparency and effective management of public financial resources.

He made these remarks in a speech read on his behalf on Monday at a GIFMIS stakeholders’ forum in Accra.

GIFMIS is an integrated computerised Financial Management System that facilitates budget preparation and execution, accounting and financial reporting, cash management, assets management, human resource and payroll management.

The Finance Minister said: “The implementation of GIFMIS is in line with government’s efforts aimed at creating a more business friendly environment and invariably harness opportunities for the people of Ghana through improved fiscal discipline, containing deficit, and eliminating corruption as part of concerted efforts to ensuring good governance.”

Mr Ofori-Atta said government was committed to cracking down on financial malpractices and wasteful public spending.

He said the priority on achieving the targets set out in PFM strategy, which recognised that achieving overall PFM improvements required a combination of right policy changes, political commitment to reforms and the design and implementation of appropriate systems and tools to enable better outcomes from the new policy orientations of government.

He said it was encouraging that so far, they had on record that all relevant rollout activities had been completed at 60 internally generated funds (IGF) generating institutions, which had been duly declared live and had started using GIFMIS.

“However, there is the need to review the progress of work to ensure that all policy, administrative, operational and technical issues are being addressed effectively to ensure an effective implementation of the IGFs on GIFMIS.

“We acknowledge that there may be some challenges associated with the processes and practices, especially network connectivity. Some efforts have been made towards addressing this issue including the introduction of the Virtual Private Network (VPN), which allows-for extra and available internet connectivity,” he added.

He said the coming into operation of the VPN had stabilised connectivity to a very large extent at the MDAs and the MMDAs currently using the system.

He said at the sametime, government through the Ministry of Communications was not relenting its efforts in supporting National Information Technology Agency (NITA) to ensure improved network stability and coverage.

“It is imperative for us to note that data has superseded oil in the global economic dispensation as the most important currency for business and economic development with information technology spearheading the onslaught towards a paperless global economic transformation,” Mr Ofori-Atta said.

“It has therefore, become a matter of absolute necessity that we accord these new interventions and processes, especially GIFMIS the needed attention and commitment to be part of the global economic movement,” he added.

Dr Nana Ato Arthur, Head, Local Government Service said: “GIFMIS, when fully implemented will address the problems concerning the lack of integration between budget preparation and execution systems, inadequate budgetary controls, lack of interface between various PFM systems across MDAs and MMDAs.”

Mr Eugene Ofosuhene, Controller and Accountant General, said, he was convinced that the successful implementation of GIFMIS throughout all MDAs and MMDAs in the country in line with the Public Financial Management Act 621 (2016) would go a long way to reduce external queries and render the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) redundant as regards public financial controls and management.

The GIFMIS project is under Component Two of the Public Financial Management Reforms Project (PFMRP), which is aimed at supporting the design, development, implication and coverage of the government’s Public Financial Management (PFM) systems and control.

The GIFMIS, rollout for the management of public funds started in 2012 after stakeholders meeting was held to discuss and agree on the road map.

The GIFMIS has been rolled out successfully in 60 MMDAs; organisation of the forum to discuss primarily issues that would ensure a successful implementation in the remaining 156 MMDAs across the country.