The Department of Finance under its Financial Management Improvement Program Division (FMIP) has held a training on Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) on September, 23 to 22, at the Institute of Public Administration in Port Moresby.
The training was attended by the Department of Finance staff, government agencies and stakeholder representatives to strengthen Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms through repeated assessments to give participants greater access to enhance the quality of assessments at the subnational level.
The workshop aims to familiarize the officers on the national standards of the public expenditure management and criteria for good public financial management. It will also improve the public management and support the primary aim of bring back.
Some of the areas covered during the training include Framework of Public Management Accountability, Budget Preparations, Budget Execution, Accounting and Reporting.
Public Financial Management Advisor Ron Hackett said this training is to prepare officers to go out to the provinces to do assessments using the national standards.
Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability Program Team Leader and Consultant James Kanalnga said officers trained will go to the provinces to do PEFA assessment.
‘’PEFA is best national standards used to measure our performance and the way we do business in the area of public management system,’’ he said.
‘’From 2016 to 2018 we implemented a number of national reform under the national PEFA platform we recommend the amendments of Public Service Management Act, national procurement policy and a number of indicators.’’
The PEFA framework started in 2005, first training was held in 2013 and this is the second. We have seen a lot of improvement in area of public financial management.
It was a successful week where officers participate actively and showed great effort of moving in the right direction.