The field visit of Public Finance Management (PFM) Technical Working Group Members took place on 18-19 November 2021 in Musanze District, Northern province and targeted the district hospital; one sector administration; one health center and one public secondary school.

The purpose of this PFM field visit was to ascertain how the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and other PFM ICT related systems such as E-procurement and School Data Management System (SDMS) are supporting local government and other service delivery units in achieving: (1) value for money in their procurement processes; (2) timely financial reporting; (2) effective controls; (3) efficient decision-making and the impacts created to the beneficiaries.

As co-chair of the PFM Sector, Enabel’s PFM team played a very important role in the organization of this 2-day field visit which brought together Enabel, World Bank; KfW; FCDO; UNDP and partner’s staff from Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) and Rwanda Public Procurement Authority (RPPA).

During this field visit, it has been confirmed that in addition to the Rwandan Government’s efforts, three major interventions namely the PFM Reforms Basket Fund where contributing development partners are KfW and Enabel; the PFM Reforms Project funded by the World Bank and the local government PFM capacity building programme financed by Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) have strongly supported the implementation of Public Financial Management Sector Strategic Plan (PFM SSP 2018-2024).
It has been found that the IFMIS was being used by the district and its subsidiary entities while the e-procurement was used by district offices and district hospital only.
Additionally, the School Data Management System academic module which is managing academic affairs was fully operational in all public and private secondary schools while its finance module which is managing revenues and expenditures has been rolled out in the public secondary school only.

The field visit helped the team to better understand the impact of the support provided to the Government of Rwanda during the implementation of the PFM Sector Strategic Plan especially in relation to the enhancement of IFMIS functionalities and its integration with other PFM ICT systems.

As of impact, (1) the paperless workflows enhanced the work efficiency for all users of IFMIS; e-procurement and SDMS; (2) the budget to be spent for purchasing papers and cartridges for printing monthly and quarterly financial reports  is no longer included in the annual work plan; (3) all local government officials are being paid their monthly salaries on time due to the integration of IFMIS with e-Tax, Smart HR, and Internet Banking as well as digitalization of the national treasury; (4) E-procurement reduced possibilities of corruption in the public procurement processes and (5) SDMS improved the management of capitation grants to public schools and reduced monitoring of school dropout among students.