The Financial Management Information System (FMIS), a reform initiative designed to improve the governance and transparency of national budget management, will be applied to 10 government ministries later this year after a successful implementation of the scheme at the National Treasury Department, officials said yesterday.

Launched in 2004 by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), and developed with World Bank support, FMIS is a tool for automating the government’s current manual public financial management processes. The project aims to create a fully integrated system covering budget formulation, budget implementation, accounting, reporting, monitoring and auditing.

Addressing the opening session of a consultative workshop on FMIS implementation yesterday, Hean Sahib, chairman of MEF’s FMIS project working group, said the ongoing project was crucial to improving national budget management.

“FMIS has become the backbone to support the government’s reform programme on public financial management in order to ensure that the implementation of the national budget is handled both transparently and efficiently for both revenues and expenses,” he said.

Sahib said during its initial phase, the FMIS was successfully implemented in several key MEF departments, including the National Treasury Department. He said the second phase of implementation would see FMIS applied in 10 state ministries by the end of the year, and all ministries and provincial departments by 2020.

A MEF press release identifies the 10 ministries as: Ministry of Economy and Finance, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Ministry of Civil Service, Ministry of Environment, and Ministry of Industry and Handicraft.

The Ministry of Education previously announced its implementation of FMIS in February 2015, and piloted by three central budget entities and three provincial offices. An MEF official speaking on the sidelines of the workshop said the initial implementation failed as few officials in the Education Ministry at the time understood the new system and it “may have attempted too much, too soon.”