At annual conference: MINFI boss insists only continuous reforms will ensure state resilience.

He was speaking at the start of the annual conference of senior officials of central, devolved, and external services of the Ministry of Finance.

Held under the theme: “Mastery and internalisation of reforms within the Ministry of Finance”, the minister said improvements in managing public finance cannot be possible if government does not accelerate the process of computerizing accounting system of the state. 

He said the system must not only exhibit unquestionable transparency, but also conform to the required international standards. 

Motaze said the Ministry of Finance has, since the beginning of 2025, adopted a new computerised system, to better manage salaries and pensions payments, known as, “Application informatique de gestion logic des effectives et de la sold”, AIGLES.

Apart from stepping up transparency and bringing government accounting system to international standards, the minister said AIGLES will also ease decision making at the level of budgeting and state budget preparation.

He stated that the norms and standards of AIGLES must also be entrenched at the level of decentralised collectivities, if grassroots governance institutions must be positioned to carry out the responsibilities expected of them. 

Minister Motaze stressed the need for every worker to imbibe the required discipline and comportment that would enable them effectively carry out the duties assigned to them. 

Reform on public accounting

The Director General of Accounting Reforms in the Ministry of Finance, Dr Basahag Achile Nestor, who delivered a lecture on reform of public accounting, said AIGLES was adopted as a strategy to put an end to the multiple misinformation that have plagued the management of salaries, pensions and other effectives of government. 

He said the situation had reached a level where Cameroonians appeared to be losing trust in whatever government said. 

Dr Basahag said different attempts at reforms in this sector met with different types of disappointments leading to various types of castigations. Some coming from the highest judicial office of the land, the Supreme Court, he said.

He mentioned how collectively, Heads of State of member countries of the Economic Community of Central African States, CEMAC, agreed to implement reforms, to not only bring accounting systems to international standards, but to ensure uniformity and guarantee higher revenue collection.

He said it is for this that since 2011, and in line with the CEMAC recommendations, the government embarked on six prongs of reforms all of which were meant to make sure actors at different levels assume their responsibilities.

Reform of career, pay & pension management

The Director in charge of Salaries and Pensions in the Directorate General of the Budget in the Ministry of Finance, Robert Simo Kengne, said the failures and disappointments observed when operation Antelope and SIGIPES were tried necessitated the adoption of AIGLES.

He gave assurance that the new system is capable of storing the personal statistics, (data) of an employee from the time of sitting for a recruitment test, to when the worker was employed, where and when the person worked, promotions, study leave and leave of absence enjoyed, up to the point where the worker proceeds on retirement.

As limitations, he said the previous systems, did not provide these details and could record limited details of the career of a worker for not more than 20 years. 

New law on local taxation

The Director of Reforms in the General Directorate of Taxes in Yaounde, Adrien Tocke, said government is not over taxing Cameroonians, as the public perceives. 

He said government is simply at a stage where it is trying to devolve many taxes to decentralized collectivities. 

Tocke said in a context where there is yet to be established uniformity in the levying and collection of many local taxes, the population feels overwhelmed with the number of people demanding them to pay one form of tax or the other.

He assured the tax paying public that in due cause, and when every level of government knows clearly what taxes it is supposed to collect; and payers know where exactly they are supposed to pay what tax, uniformity would be established, and the impression of too many taxes would no longer exist. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3358 of Monday February 03, 2025