Somalia: Ministry of finance launched new financial management system

Somalia’s ministry of finance (MOF) has launched today new financial management information system(NFIM), the overall objective is to provide a system with adequate trials to improve administrative accountability in processing transactions. Also the improved timeliness, accuracy and comprehensiveness of financial reports will aid effectiveness of decision making.

In a ceremony attended by key federal ministers, governor of Central bank, civil service commission, airport and sea port authorities, accountant general office, auditor general and various delegates, Minister Hussein Abdi Halane announced Somalia financial Somalia management information system( SMIS) that is more credible with greater transparency on contracts/concessions review and asset recovery.

“ The goal is deploy a robust IT infrastructure to all of the MOF offices and all key government institutions and stake holders” he underlined.

This new system will focus on budgeting, expenditures, revenue collection and that will result in improved reporting capabilities and establishing an accurate until trial. In addition to that, enpenseand revenue related data will entered in the system. Electronic financial reports through the SFMIS system will also be published and posted to the ministry’s Website.

“ The previous manual system lacked transparency and accountability and was difficult to pay the salaries of government employees on time and perhaps use to make more days to fix it. After implementing this new system we hope our public finances will be managed properly and will improve the overall public finance management” Farhan Mohamud added.

According to the new PFM, the ministry will have the mandate to manage procurement process across ministries, departments and other government institutions. MOF is committed to control contracts and procurement processes. After bids accepted by the MOF, vendors will send invoices to ministries, departments or agencies, which then request payment of the invoice to the accountant general office.

Each specific payment authorized to the vendor by the accountant general’s office made directly from the Central bank(CBS) reports daily to the accountant general’s office on a consolidated Treasury single account system.

The Central bank process payments instructions to pay a specific vendor. Transfer is made from a single treasury single account to a settlement account held at central bank by a commercial bank.

The new system requires vendors to obtain business registration number ( BNS) from ministry of commerce.

SFMIS will going to live in January 2015, which will support the above said reforms. User testing and training is currently underway.

The SFMIS implementation is being financed by the world bank and the federal government of Somalia welcomes this report.

“ We are grateful to all our development partners and other stakeholders that have supported the PFM reform process in various ways and beseech even more support and commitment in ensuring that we continuously full meet the expectations of all our various stakeholders.