THE Ministry of Finance and Planning has launched a government electronic payment gateway (GePG) mobile App, an application that will enable users to inquire, assess and pay government bills through a mobile phone service.
Dubbed “GePG Tanzania”, the new mobile phone App—one of its kind, comes as another milestone in the country as users will no longer waste time to travel long distances to make their electronic transactions to pay their bills.
The new App was launched at the Treasury Square by Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Planning Dotto James when closing a three-day GePG annual meeting 2019/20 which was attended by officials from the ministry, financial institutions and representatives from telecommunications companies.
Speaking at the meeting, the director of financial information systems management at the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Mr John Sausi, said with the new mobile phone application, users would, among other things, detect their different bills instantly.
They include electricity, water and traffic police bills, among others.
“If you have a national identity card, you do not need to visit a nearest police station to get a police loss report form. Instead, you can only get it instantly through this application,’’ he said.
He added that the new App had artificial intelligence which would help the user in security matters, meaning that in all transactions via the application, security was highly guaranteed.
For his part, Mr James asked a team of experts from GePG to ensure they provided education to users so that they could be able to use properly the new App.
He also hailed the team of experts in the ministry who designed the GePG system and the new mobile App, saying it was a good sign of patriotism.
Mr James, who doubles as the Pay Master General (PMG), further directed all accounting officers in government ministries and public entities to ensure they prepared billing systems that would reduce disturbance to clients who had been incurring problems in accessing their bills.
GePG is a centralised system, connected to all available electronic revenue collection channels to facilitate electronic money transactions from members of the public to the government and vice versa with a view to having an optimal e-payment gateway platform that would improve government revenue collection by adopting an electronic system.
GePG system operations are based on statutory requirements under the Public Finance Act, 2001 as amended by the Finance Act, 2017 which specifically directs that all public money shall be collected electronically through the GePG system.
