Chitungwiza Municipality has adopted programme-based budgeting (PBB), which is intended to improve revenue collection efficiency, making it one of the few local authorities to do so.
The local authority’s middle and senior managers, as well as the staff under the Finance Department, were trained during a two-day workshop over the weekend on how to do PBB and use the national chart of accounts (COA), which guides reporting on finance issues.
Participants were familiarised with the new structures of the Sage Evolution, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system used for accounting and receipting.
Facilitator Mr. Freddy Machingura said that tracking finances in the future would be simple.
“We can now produce accounts or activities that happened in finance, housing or technical and support services. You can actually trace the budget, what was built and received and the collection efficiency for each ward,” he said.
“We have also gone through the receipting module, which is compliant to programme-based budgeting. You are now able to trace the amount received for a particular service, where the money was banked, and in what currency.”
Mr. Machingura said that Chitungwiza was now compliant with the Ministry of Local Government and the Ministry of Finance’s expectations.
Chitungwiza Finance Director, Mrs. Evangelista Machona, said: “We are one of the few councils that have adopted this earlier. This is going to increase our revenue collection and accountability for funds. Our policymakers are going to make decisions with reliable information. So, this is going to assist a lot.”
