A three-day capacity building MINFI-organised workshop began in Yaounde on Tuesday.

Accountants and auditors of State institutions in the country are being drilled on best practices they need to embrace to ensure that expenses are done in a regular way and in all sincerity so that at the end of the year, what they present as report ties with the reality.

This is within the framework of a three-day workshop organised by the Ministry of Finance (MINFI) in collaboration with the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court. Finance Minister, Alamine Ousmane Mey, yesterday September 11 chaired the opening ceremony at the Yaounde Hilton.

In a speech, the Minister said those in charge of accompanying ministries and State-owned enterprises need to be well aware of the option taken by the State to improve on governance, transparency and to properly execute the budget allocated to their respective institutions. “We want to address all the management weaknesses that have been identified by the Audit Bench. We want to ensure that all involved in it master the techniques, have the tools and know what to do in full collaboration with their hierarchy. We hope at term to have recommendations that would help the State to further improve on the execution of the budget,” Alamine Mey said.

Like the Minister, the Director General of Treasury, Moh Sylvester, said there have been noticeable anomalies in the production of financial statements. “Most often, the monthly statements that we ask for are not well prepared. There are so many institutions that do not have well trained accountants. There are contract officers who have not been trained and we are forced to have this training yearly so as to improve their output. We just have a reform of the accounting system of public institutions and none of them is up-to-date with the accounting system that is tilted more towards private accounting,” he noted.

Participants are listening to lectures on topics like, drawing up of the budget; follow up of the execution of the budget, book keeping like cashbook, journal and the production of monthly and yearly reports. The Minister like the DG of Treasury reminded the participants that their collaboration with the authorities is of utmost importance otherwise execution of the budget will be low, delivery will be below expectation and the country would end up with a budget that is not used for the sake of the population. “Should we succeed in that, we would be able to have a good financial reporting of public institutions at all times be it monthly, quarterly or yearly,” they said.