Capacity Building for Financial Controllers (Phase 4)

From September 20 to 25, 2020, was held in Ebolowa the 4th phase of a cycle of capacity building of Financial Controllers and staff of the Division of Budgetary Control, Audit and Quality of Expenditure, which is part of the implementation of the training plan for staff of the Directorate General of Budget.

Chaired by Mr. Cyrill EDOU ALO’O, Director General of the Budget, this meeting was attended by the Head of the Division of Budgetary Control, Audit and Quality of Expenditure, the Deputy Director of General Affairs of the DGB, 32 central Financial Controllers, expert trainers and officials of the Ministry of Finance invited.

This training session was marked by the unexpected visit of the Minister of Finance, who, while passing through the city of Ebolowa, was keen to talk to the Financial Controllers about the skills and attitudes to adopt in order to effectively support the structures to which they are placed.

The work in Ebolowa therefore made it possible to present the thirteen (13) training modules ranging from the general framework of public finance management to budgetary procedures, including the role of the Financial Controller in the PPBS chain, the State budget nomenclature, the role of the Financial Controller in the public contractualization process, internal control in public entities, taxes and duties in the budgetary procedure, control of pay and pensions, external audit, ethics and deontology in the control and audit of public budgets, administrative drafting and archiving in financial control, optimal use of PROBMIS. These modules were contextualized with respect to the target audience, which was essentially composed of Financial Controllers in the ministries.

At the end of the seminar, the participants made some recommendations, namely:

• enable the Financial Controller, through a circular or any other regulatory act, to properly assert his or her responsibilities within the PPBS chain. Indeed, the MINEPAT circular that institutes the PPBS chains in the administrations specifies “a representative of MINFI”, who for the most part is not the Financial Controller;
• Adjust the PROBMIS system to allow validation of a contract or letter order which, after examination of the tender documents, is awarded for less than CFAF 5 million. This could be done by integrating a module in the system that would make it possible to know whether or not the letter-order or the contract comes from a call for tender or not;
• Establish a permanent consultation platform, at the time of budget preparation, between the sectoral DPB/MINFI-MINEPAT and central CFs to refine the preparation of the budgets of the public administrations with which they are placed;
• Remove the “payment order edition” and “cashing mandate edition” menus in PROBMIS in the Financial Controller’s profile because these documents are edited and signed by the authorizing officer.