Embrace innovative practices:

Embrace innovative practices

Rasika SOMARATHNA

Public Administration and Home Affairs Minister Sarath Amunugama yesterday urged the country's custodians of public money to embrace innovative and emerging best practices, in order to overcome deficiencies and inadequacies of the traditional Government Accounting and Financial Management systems.

The Minister addressing public sector accountants and auditors said that continuous professional development and guidance was necessary to keep the countries public finances alive and open to the new global requirements.

Minister Amunugama who is also the Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning made these comments while inaugurating the two day international conference on "New Public Financial Management and Public Accountability" at hotel Galadari in Colombo yesterday. Creating awareness of new public financial management methods and public accountability among the public sector accountants and auditors becomes vital to ensure transparency, accountability and growth in the public sector, he continued. The Minister identified the conference as a great opportunity for relevant officers to expand their know-how, knowledge and skills.

Thus getting acquainted with new financial management principles would better equip them to perform their duties as custodians of public monies more effectively with greater transparency and accountability he added

During his speech, he also urged officials to make a thorough follow up after releasing funds for public ventures in order to alleviate malpractices.

All transactions should be transparent and officials should be accountable to ensure that the public would get their money's worth he added. He said that the public sector should take examples from the best practices adopted in the private sector. Such a partnership between the two sectors would bring fruitful results he added.

Also commenting on the global economic recession the Minister said that, no country was immune to the crisis and therefore it was very important to manage the public finance effectively, in order to achieve maximum efficiency.

However, the Minister was of the opinion that the Asian block and specially the SAARC region was better equipped to handle some of the global economic shocks due to the unique economic structures the region possess. Auditor General S. Swarnajothi addressing his colleagues on the occasion urged them to be more vigilant in the face of many a financial scandal surfacing in the recent past, where public money had been misused and plundered.

He said that before blaming others it was important to make a thorough assessment and make necessary changes to rectify the faults which lye within the establishment.

He urged relevant authorities to expand their mode of inspections beyond mere financial auditing to identify faults which may lye within the management structure in order to prescribe remedial measures before it gets out of hand.

The conference would deliberate new trends in managing public finance, during the two days with countries top financial managers in attendance.