MINISTER in the Ministry of Finance, Bishop Juan Edghill has taken issue with Kaieteur News’ reportage two days in row speculating as to why the agency has not been able to operationalise certain key features of its accounting system, the Integrated Financial Management and Accounting System ((IFMAS).One of those speculations, as reported in the June 5 article, is that “the absence of the two features…have opened up the floodgates for mismanagement and lack of proper accountability with regard to assets and consumables acquired by the government.”
In an effort to set the record straight and address the misconception, the following is what the Minister had to say about the matter:
“The Ministry of Finance views with utter disgust Kaieteur News’ headlines of its June 4 edition, “Billions in assets have gone untraced” and June 5 edition, “Finance Ministry refuses to train operators”.
“Both headlines are not only designed to sensationalise, but are misleading and, once again, the accompanying stories do not provide any information to support the stated headlines.
“In its Wednesday June 4 edition, Kaieteur News purports to suggest to the nation, obviously to promote the sale of their newspapers, that “Billions of assets have gone untraced.” Nowhere in the article did they produce any evidence to suggest that there are billions of untraced assets.
“While we acknowledge that there are two modules that have not yet been implemented, there is not one iota of evidence that exists that suggests that Government’s assets of any amount have gone untraced.
“Kaieteur News is called upon to produce the evidence to substantiate its blazing headlines. We at the ministry believe that built into the IFMAS system are several tiers of internal controls that debunk this malicious assertion.
“We herein state, for the public record, the facts about the IFMAS system:
The implementation IFMAS in 2004 have allowed Government of Guyana to remarkably improved its Public Financial Management System and these improvements include tight security controls, improved accountability and enhanced efficient decision making. The modules which are currently in place included; Controls, Appropriations, General Ledger, Expenditure, Revenue and Treasury Management,
“With the implementation of the software, all cheques are now digitized and are issued from the Official Consolidated Fund Bank Account, thereby eliminating the effort of having to manually prepare cheques. In addition, the process of reconciling the Official Consolidated Fund Bank Account has been enhanced by the utilization of the Treasury Management Module and now the bank reconciliation is done on a timely basis.
“The system continues to provide users countrywide with an easy to use means of obtaining information necessary for confident decision making. It also continues to support the need of individual line managers in the Central Government to retrieve financial data from an online real time system.
“Since the introduction of IFMAS, the Ministry of Finance has provided support in terms of training and advice/guidance to government officers/users of the system. In addition, the Ministry of Finance in collaboration with the Public Service Ministry continues to facilitate training sessions bi-annually, in an effort to ensure that all users are properly equipped with the knowledge and understanding of IFMAS functionality and the processing of transaction in the software.
“As technology advances, it is the Government of Guyana’s desire to continually update its operation and systems to that of international best practices and standards. As such, the Ministry of Finance is currently looking at the implementation of two additional modules, namely the Purchasing Module and the Asset Module.
“The Purchasing Module seeks to do the following;
* Provide the ability to create purchase requisitions and purchase order with self-creating commitments to reserve the necessary funds (fully integrated with the Appropriations Module currently installed)
* Provide the ability to record the receipts and return of goods and automatically update the purchase order to reflect the transactions
* Complete integration with the payment process to reflect payment for goods ordered and received
* Provide the ability to create an asset record when goods are received
The Inventory/Assets Module seeks to do the following:
* Provide the ability to create inventory and asset entries when entering a new record based on the requisitions
* Provide the ability to have automatic stock ordering when the system hits a user-defined reorder point
* Provide the ability for tracking issues and receipts
* Provide the ability to enter receipts for deliveries to stores via the Purchasing module
* Provide the ability to make adjustments to reflect inventory average and shortages
* The ability to provide queries and reports on current inventory, stock activity and receiving reports

“The unhealthy practice of stating unsubstantiated and unverified information in the public, with a view to getting a response could only be described as malicious.
“Had Kaieteur News been careful to obtain all the necessary information, the grave error of misrepresenting the facts, as they would have done in the two stories, could have been avoided.
“This is yet another instance of yellow journalism.”