The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) is engaged on a Public Financial Management Reform Program (PFMRP) , officially launched in December 2004.  The aim of the Program is to improve the standards of management and accountability and effective use of all current and capital resources.  The Government sees the Public Financial Management Reform Program as a central plank underlying the general administrative reform program.

A core component of PFMRP is the introduction of a Whole-of-Government Financial Management Information System (FMIS) .  The FMIS is envisaged to be used by all departments in MEF, all line Ministries in RGC’s central government and all Provincial Treasuries.  The FMIS will consist of standard functionality provided by a Commercial-of-the-Shelf and internationally recognized financial accounting package, including Ledger, Procurement, Accounts Payable and Receivable, Budget Planing and Management, Banking, Reporting and Asset Management.  The application will be web-enabled and will publish financial information on MEF’s web site, information relating to budget, budget execution, project funding and financial performance with the information compliant with the Cash basis of accounting as promulgated in the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) .  The further development of FMIS and the PFMRP will see full adoption of accrual accounting across all areas of Government.

FMIS will function on and across an infrastructure that will be provided by the successful FMIS contractor that includes all hardware, software and communications required to support national and provincial governments to access, process and report on financial affairs of those governments.  The network will also support email, file sharing, web access and voice communications across the network, connecting the finance areas of all Ministry and Provincial Governments.

As a nation that has not previously enjoyed any computer-based financial processing, accounting and reporting system, Cambodia is being challenged to develop the necessary skills to complete such a large project across networks that as yet only partially exist.  While the challenges to MEF are considerable, the desire to implement this project is strong and is driven by both the Minister and senior management of MEF.

The FMIS project is under the management and supervision of the IT Department  of MEF and is responsible to the PFMRP Reform Secretariat and senior management and Minister.