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Contact:
Claudia Monlouis
Monday, November 8, 2004 - The Ministry of Finance is re-engineering the
business processes of the Government of Saint Lucia. The Ministry has been
collaborating with the Eastern Caribbean Economic Management Programme (ECEMP)
in executing the exercise dubbed “Strengthening Financial Management.”
The project, which will specifically introduce a new Payables and Purchasing
System for the government, is being spearheaded by the Department of the
Accountant General. Accountant General, Mr. Agosta Degazon said the project had
covered two critical phases and was now into its third phase.
“Our five core business practices identified under this project are Accounting,
Funds Management, HR, Payroll, and Procurement. It also involves reviewing our
legal framework. There will also be a review of our organisation and revised job
descriptions to go along with those streamlined procedures”. Mr. Degazon
explained.
Team Leader for Procurement, Tessa Felicien said the Accountant General’s
Department now delivers a faster service, particularly since the tedious Voucher
System had been discontinued and is being replaced by an automated process.
“With the voucher system, what you had at first was this manual system, whereby
you had both the procurement and the LPO (Local Purchase Order) joined with the
invoice.
Customers constantly complain that Treasury is taking way too long in the
processing of vouchers, when in fact, sometimes the system was very involved”,
Miss Felicien explained.
Currently all governments departments are electronically connected via the new
financial system known as Smartstream.
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