Tanzania Government Financial Accounts Now Under One Digital Platform

Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango speaks during the three day opening meeting in Dar es Salaam yesterday of working for preparation of consolidate statement for the financial year end 30th  June 2019. PHOTO | SALIM SHAO 

Dar es Salaam — The government moved closer to a seamless monitoring platform for

financial transactions across all its functions with the launch of a technology driven accountin system.

Finance and Planning minister Philip Mpango yesterday launched the 'Government Accounting Consolidation System (GACS)' billed as the next major step to raise accountability and efficiency in the use of public resources.

It will enable realtime access to consolidated accounting information a cross central and local government as well as public corporation or agencies.

The GACS system was unveiled during the preparation of the consolidated financial report for the year ended June 2019.

It will replaced the 'Excel System' which has been described as old-fashioned and prone to misinformation or manipulation.

The new system, which was designed by local experts in the ministry uses a digital formula that connects all financial statements from any public office.

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"The world is now moving into a digital economy, I'm happy that developers of this system are Tanzanians," said Dr Mpango.

He said the GACS system simplifies the collection of financial links in all public institutions and central and local government offices.

"Using the former system 'Excel' took a lot of time to link the financial information from various places and was expensive through the hiring of many experts for the job. However, with GACS, the whole job will be done in a single centre monitor all offices," he said.

With this in mind, according to him, the new system will save time and costs, increase transparency and accountability than before.

National Chief Accountant, Mr Francis Mwakapalila, said the establishment of the GACS was guided and approved by International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS Accrual) and The Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014 (GFSM 2014).

According to him, the developer of the system have also developed other systems like Government electronic payment gateway (GePG) and Government Salary Payment Platform (GSPP).

"Tanzania is leading on the African continent in high-quality financial reporting on an accrual basis for the public sector," he noted. He said Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Gambia have visited Tanzania to learn from its success in rolling out the new system.