Aerial shot of Suva City [File Photo]

The Ministry of Finance is working on Implementing budget software which will be incorporated in the new Financial Management Implementation System to assist in timely budget reports.

This was highlighted by the Minister for Finance Biman Prasad in parliament during his ministerial statement.

Prasad says that currently the budget is prepared on an Excel basis which is a concern given advancement in technology.

Minister for Finance Biman Prasad

He states that this will create real-time production of report which will be ready for presentation in parliament.

“Currently, the whole budget process, in fact, I was also surprised, Mr Speaker, when I came in last year, that the whole budget process is Excel-based and the Ministry of Finance is also working towards a budget software, which will be integrated with the new FEMIS at a later stage.”

Prasad says that the new FEMIS will also eliminate any manual intervention, like data punching, and the majority of the payroll-related calculations will be possible through the new system.

The finance minister says that it will also be easier to generate ad-hoc reports and customise reports with new parameters to suit the needs of the users and the decision-making process.

Prasad says that the new system, apart from making it easier for better analytics, will allow the Ministry of Finance to disaggregate financial and accounting data into categories like climate change, gender-based activities, simply with the click of a button.

He highlights that this is a major transformative project to modernise the government’s financial management information system.