Africa-Press – South-Sudan. By Wek Atak Kacjang
At least 30 officials have been trained on public financial management, accountability and monitoring and transparency.
The trainings provide capacity building to state ministries of finance officials to increase budget allocation to social service sectors in the country.
The project launched in 2020, aims to strengthen national and subnational public financial management mechanisms targeting three states; Central Equatoria State, Western Equatoria State and Northern Bahr El-Ghazal State.
The project is being implemented by the national ministry of finance and planning and the national revenue authority with support of joint sustainable development goals, UNDP and UNICEF.
“This capacity building component will enable the state ministries that are responsible for reporting all this fund given to them by their state ministries of finance report back to the minister of finance, then the state ministry of finance will report back to Juba the treasury so that there’s complete cycle of disbursement and report back, this is one and when they do that we see into it there’s an aspect of capacity building in the sense of making people report and when they report, there’s an accountability component.
“The second component has built evidences of transfers for the past two and three or four years and the state level,” said Elyaba Yona Damondo, UNICEF social policy specialist.
The project worth more one million US dollars is co-funded by UNDP and UNICEF.
It also aims to ensure by 2022, a two percent increase in budget allocation to national priorities and social services which work toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
“We as the custodian of the money from the national government and as well as the local revenue that have been collected here, we are sure that the training that has been acquired for the public finance management is really made the ministry to account for each cash that have been received either its money from national government or from local collection within the state, the public finance we are mostly clear with the accountability and transparency to state authorities as well as the national government under public finance management as well as the public,” said Tambua Aquila, Western Equatoria State Ministry of Finance Director for Planning.
It is expected that at the end of the project, the finance officials will be allocated a greater resource to critical social services and ensuring their efficient, effective and transparent utilization, social cohesion and benefit all people, especially the most vulnerable children and women.
Public budget allocations to social sectors remain low in South Sudan, within 2019/20 only 1% of public spending going to health, 5% to education and 2% to social and humanitarian affairs.
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