UAE MoF organises workshops concerning the preparation of the Federal budget for 2018

Sunday 26 March 2017

Abu Dhabi - MENA Herald: As part of its strategic role to optimise the use of financial resources, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) held 11 training workshops in March at its premises in Abu Dhabi. The workshop were aimed to train and initiate federal entities on the preparation of the draft of the Federal Budget for the fiscal year 2018, and to optimise the use of financial resources through sound financial planning.

Participants included budget specialists from all UAE federal entities, as well as senior officials from the Ministry’s Budget Department and the technical team of the automated budget system.

HE Younis Haji Al Khoori, Undersecretary of MoF stressed the Ministry’s commitment to provide information that will help support federal entities when preparing for the budget and strengthen the government financial performance.

HE Saeed Rashid Al Yateem, Assistant Undersecretary of Resources and Budget Sector at MoF, said: “The Ministry of Finance continues its efforts to develop effective mechanisms to prepare and implement the federal budget, enhance the financial planning for the budget and spread awareness on financial hedging. These elements help in achieving financial sustainability and supporting the UAE’s economic and financial interest.”

HE Al Yateem added: “The key financial instructions to prepare the budget draft for the fiscal year 2018, including preparing and studying government entities’ estimated revenues and expenditures in line with the issued laws, decrees and decisions; rationalising and controlling expenditures without affecting the ability of government entities to implement and achieve its goals and programmes; working on the preparation of a development budget which encourages expenditure on productive investment; preparing the draft of the federal budget according to the best international practices and using the latest automated systems to prepare the draft of the budget.”

The workshops reviewed the procedures involved in developing the automated budgeting system, which links the employees’ data with the Bayanati system to enable government entities to download the database of job description and grades and updating it during budget preparation. The automated budgeting system also provides payroll schedules and links the programme structure with the organisational structure to identify the financial cost on all levels. This will facilitate the funding procedures for all departments, activities, services and accounting items.

MoF introduced the federal entities to the instructions followed when updating and preparing the draft of the federal budget for the fiscal year 2018, provided technical training on the automated budgeting system, responded to the specialists’ inquiries, and specified that 20/04/2017 is the fixed deadline for submitting a draft budget to MoF.

During the workshop, the Ministry reviewed the Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) which is a methodology issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). COFOG provides a detailed classification of functions and socio-economic objectives, which are wished to be achieved through their projects and government expenditure. COFOG classifies the transactions of government expenditures and non-financial or non-produced assets.

The workshop also discussed the three key categories of COFOG which are: the government’s main objectives, groups which represent the resources used to achieve the government’s key objectives, and the categories which represent the resources used to achieve detailed objectives. The workshops was concluded with an overview of the COFOG manual, and the Ministry announcing its unified call centre and email address to directly respond to any inquiry by government entities with regards to the preparation of the budget for 2018 and COFOG.

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