Finance Department

IRC and Finance partner to improve GST collection

The objective of the merger is to improve the level of compliance and GST collection amongst Government service providers and reduce the administrative burden on all National Government Agencies.

The merger was launched today in Port Moresby.

ISC Commissioner General, Sam Koim, said it is their intention to make GST the number one revenue earner in the country.

Part if the strategy to achieve this is to invoke Section 65A of the GST Act 2007.

Positive results in ‘Phones against Corruption’

The concept uses free-of-charge text messages to the Digicel number ‘16321’.

This sees the identity of the user protected as the mobile numbers are encrypted and only the report is sent to the Department of Finance.

The Department launched the roll out of the project to include 14 provincial governments and 30 national government agencies.

Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan said since the launch in July 2014, the initiative has seen positive results uncovering over 500 cases.

Finance Department committed to progress

Department Secretary, Dr Ken Ngangan, said Finance will now move away from cheque writing to more oversight and monitoring of how public funds are being managed.

According to Dr Nganan, the Finance Department will step up on its monitoring role, checking how money is being spent at the agency level, provinces and districts.

“Starting this year the Department of Finance and DIRD will now be visiting the provinces and districts ensuring that DSIP and PSIP are well spent according to the plans sent in for funding support.”

Warrants to be issued on cash availability: Ngangan

Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan revealed during the launching of the amended Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) that warranting is now done through the budget management committee.

“Previously we just issued warrants based on the budget.

“Now what we are doing, we are issuing warrants in line with cash availability. So that when we issue warrants and cheques are written, there is cash there to clear the cheque,” he said.

Dr Ngangan said this was one of the basic control measures in the PFMA but was never complied with previously.

Finance Dept to table government books

“We are now balancing our government books for 2015. We expect to present our government accounts from 2009 to 2015 in the March session. 

“We have opened our government accounts January 4, the earliest ever opening of public accounts in our nation’s history.

"That is so Papua New Guineans will know what their government accounts look like for those years,” Marape said.