Appraisal of GIFMIS In Public Sector Procurement in Ghana

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This post is a thesis review on the topic, "Assessment of Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (GIFMIS) in Public Sector Procurement in Ghana"

Researcher: S. A. A.

Background

All nations around the world seek better standards of living for their people by providing goods, works, and services in adequate quantities and at affordable prices. Nations mobilize funds from various sources in order to meet these requirements. It is however, becoming increasingly difficult to provide the better standard of living due to difficulties in mobilizing funds coupled with ever increasing demand for goods, works, and services.

One definition of procurement is that it is the process of acquiring goods, works and services resulting in the award of contracts under which payments are made in the implementation of projects. From this definition it is seen that payments which come from funds form an integral part of procurement. These funds may be public, corporate or personal in nature.

Over the years, there have been problems in generating public funds in Ghana due to a myriad of reasons on one side of the funds and expenditure equation, and on the other side, there have been leakages through perceived corruption, wastage and mismanagement of public funds. These usually create national economic problems which are sometime referred to international financial institutions such the World Bank and the International Monitory Fund (IMF) for bail -out.

Traditionally, public procurement financial management was mainly paper- based and not holistic in character. Transactions involving public funds and management information were kept by entities in hard copies essentially at department levels and there was no proper coordination between departments, entities and the central government as a whole. This gave rise to problems such as lack of accurate and current information on budgetary allocations, delays in payment processing and financial reporting, poor feedback mechanism for assessing budgetary performance, and lack of uniform Chart of Accounts (COA) which made the comparison of the performance of various budgets difficult. The Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) was therefore launched in May 2009 to enhance public financial management through reliable financial reporting, informed decision making, and reliable planning for national growth.

The aim of the study therefore was to assess the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) in Ghana. This dissertation assessed the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) in terms of number of transactions processed, user friendliness of the system, training programmes on the system, participants satisfaction levels of the training programmes, performance of the advocates, responsiveness of the service desk, and problems encountered by users of the system.

Introduction

Public procurement constituted 50 to 70% of the national budget (after personal emoluments), 14% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and 24% of total imports (World Bank CPAR 2003). Goods, works and services intended for public use should be procured based on national procurement rules and in the case of Ghana the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663). The rationale for Procurement rules is for governments to have the best value for money when procuring. Procurement is a common source of corruption and therefore procurement systems tend to include controls aimed to detect and deter corruption.

Methodology

A questionnaire survey approach coupled with interviews was adopted for the study. Data from the survey were largely analyzed using descriptive statistics. From the study the level of usage of GIFMIS in Accra was ascertained and prevailing challenges associated with the usage were also found.

Key Findings

Findings from the study point to a very significant rise in the number of Procure to Pay (P2P) transactions over a period of one and half years (2013 - mid-2014). The P2P system was user friendly although there was need for improvement. Ninety five (95) people, on average, were trained in every training session. Participants in the training programmes were satisfied but not with all the segments. The trainees were ill-at-ease‟ in report generation and period end processes of the system. The advocates were doing most of the work in the MDAs. In most of the MDAs the personnel involved in P2P analysis did not practice data entry and report generation processes after the training sessions. Performance of the advocates was satisfactory. Responsiveness of the service desk was also satisfactory. Problems associated with the use of the system were also outlined.

Recommendation

It was recommended among others that more training be provided on period end processes and report generation, the personnel involved in P2P analysis in MDAs should gradually be weaned away from the advocates, and the space between the list of transactions and total amount on the cheque be reduced.

GIFMIS