All Government accounts should be open and ready for use as of January 6th.
Minister for Finance, Renbo Paita, announced this in a press conference today, saying all government offices should have started work and public servants are not to give holiday excuses.
Additionally, Secretary of Finance, Dr Ken Ngangan thanked all staff who helped out in the close of accounts for 2019 and made mention of the 2019 cheques.
“I’d like to make notice that all government cheques for 2019 are to be presented by the 31st of December, 2019, but we have relaxed that. Cheques written in 2019 can continue to be presented in 2020, I have now signed of a circular to all the commercial banks not to reject the 2019 cheques.”
He said in the meantime, 2019 cheques are still valid for 12 months.
Minster for Finance, Renbo Paita, acknowledged the team’s work of the close of government accounts during the festive season and thanked former Finance Ministers for the reform projects that took place as he joined the Finance team a month ago.
“There still needs to be some substantial amount of work done in pushing some of those reforms forward and I’m hoping that this year, in spite of those challenges and given the team that we have, I’m predicting that we will have a very good year.”
Paita is now looking towards accomplishing major reforms he brought forward for this year, such as the Special Economic Zone, Financial Inclusion, Block Chain Project, control over expenditure and the IFMS project.
Team Finance plans on spending more time this year away from the office and put more time into travelling and seeing rural districts to observe work done on ground, in terms of DSIP funds.
(Article by Jasmine Iru – third year UPNG Journalism student; Picture of Minister for Finance, Renbo Paita)