MANILA – The Marcos administration will come up with a Public Financial Management (PFM) Reforms Roadmap, which will contain policies and strategies on digitalization, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said on Tuesday.
In a statement, the DBM said the adoption of the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and the Budget and Treasury Management System (BTMS) would be included in the national roadmap that will be created by the PFM Committee.
The PFM Committee, formed in 2011 under Executive Order (EO) 55, is composed of representatives from the DBM, Department of Finance, Commission on Audit, and Bureau of the Treasury.
In June this year, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. issued EO 29, directing the full digitalization of PFM processes through the adoption of the IFMIS throughout the bureaucracy.
Under EO 29, the PFM Committee is directed to reengineer PFM processes and the IFMIS.
The IFMIS facilitates the generation of vital information on all aspects of government financial transactions, to be made publicly accessible through information technology.
An integral part of the IFMIS is the BTMS, a web-based, fully-automated and centralized database that will facilitate the generation of vital information on all aspects of government financial transactions and serve as an online ledger where transactions are mapped in real-time from purchase to payment.
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Fiscal Division, during one of the recent sessions of the IMF-World Bank Annual Meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, commended the Philippines for proactively improving its PFM systems through digital transformation.
“The Philippines, especially the Department of Budget and Management, was rising to the challenge and they wanted to resolve issues [related to the PFM]. Hence, they wanted to proactively take support from the IMF. They wanted to work on several parallel fronts including some key decisions,” IMF deputy division chief Sailendra Pattanayak said during the Capacity Development Talk on Transforming Public Finance through GovTech.
In the same capacity development session, DBM principal economist Joselito Basilio stressed the importance of adopting GovTech solutions in the digital transformation of PFM processes across government agencies.
“GovTech shall be harnessed in order to maximize the benefits of digitalization, directing these benefits and overall welfare to the stakeholders themselves -- the general public and government agencies. User experience is therefore of paramount importance,” Basilio said.
Basilio said the DBM will continue collaborating with the IMF to ensure that international standards are met.
The DBM sought partnerships with development partners such as the IMF to provide technical assistance in designing and formulating strategies to modernize PFM systems and improve interoperability.
A Technical Mission on Digitalization spearheaded by the IMF-Fiscal Affairs Department was conducted June 6 to 20 this year.
The Philippine delegation, headed by Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, attended the Morocco meetings from Oct. 9 to 15 and met with development partners, central bankers, private sector executives, and other stakeholders from around the world to discuss the country's strong macroeconomic fundamentals, growth outlook, and investment opportunities. (PNA)
