TABMIS: A “backbone tool” for managing national budgets

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TABMIS has been implemented in all financial institutions and the State Treasury system nationwide. Photo: ThuyLinh.

Building a transparent management mechanism

Since the beginning of the second quarter of 2006, the Ministry of Finance has worked with the contractor (IBM Company) to develop an overall project plan with five basic stages: analysis, design of business processes, development system, integrated, deployment and warranty, and maintenance. Over a long period of pilot construction and operation in several local State treasuries, since 2010, TABMIS has been implemented in all financial institutions and State treasuries nationwide.

Being able to "cover" TABMIS, a series of jobs have been organised and completed with the outstanding efforts of hundreds of State Treasury officials at central and local levels, officials of departments of the Ministry of Finance and contractors. Along with that, training for project staff as well as staff involved in operating the system has been promoted; propaganda and introductions of the TABMIS system were also conducted widely to all provinces and cities. The Ministry of Finance also prepared a quietly complete legal framework to enable TABMIS to be put into practice. These jobs not only create immediate conditions for TABMIS to deploy and operate but also pave the way for other reform activities of the finance sector in the future. These are also the first steps of the State Treasury to gradually build the advanced, simple and transparent financial management mechanism, and be ready for Vietnam's international economic integration.

According to the State Treasury, being aware of the State budget accounting is the main task of the State Treasury system, so the State budget accounting regime is constantly improved and updated based on selective acquisition of good practices in the world. With the successful development and implementation of the national TABMIS System, accounting work has been fundamentally reformed in the direction of moving from a distributed accounting model to a centralised model; changing from cash accounting to adjusted cash accounting, expanding the scope of State accounting, improve the quality of information and reports. Since then, reports on revenue, expenditure and final settlement of the State budget have been prepared and provided by the State Treasury in accordance with regulations, effectively serving the management, supervision and administration of leaders at all levels. Therefore, the State budget settlement reports are always approved by the National Assembly with high approval rates.

The reality has proved that TABMIS has brought practical benefits to State budget management agencies at all levels in terms of improving the effectiveness of their functions and tasks. Specifically, TABMIS helped support the preparation of financial reports on State budget revenue and expenditure estimates; TABMIS also provides quick and accurate information on the implementation of the state budget at all times; ensuring the synchronisation of State budget revenue and expenditure data between the State Treasury and the finance, tax and customs agencies.

For the State Treasury, in the task of performing State budget accounting, TABMIS contributes to perfecting accounting work, funds and properties of the State, aid, loans and debt repayments of the Government and local authorities assigned to manage as prescribed by law, as well as reporting on the implementation of State budget revenues and expenditures to financial agencies of the same level and relevant State agencies according to the provisions of law, while summarising and preparing the annual State budget settlement and submitting it to the Ministry of Finance for submission to the Government in accordance with the law.

As for financial agencies at all levels (central, provincial and district), the allocation of State budget estimates is carried out on TABMIS, contributing to improving the efficiency of management of State budget allocations from the stage of estimates importation at level 0 (decided by the National Assembly and People's Councils), allocated to level-1 estimating units, intermediate level and funded units with the State budget.

Accelerating the process of public financial management reform

According to the State Treasury, in the future, TABMIS will be directed to expand connectivity with relevant agencies such as ministries, branches, people's councils, People's Committees at all levels and units using the State budget into a closed, modern budget implementation process, and fully implement interfaces with other application programmes such as budgeting systems of ministries and branches; integrated management information system of the General Department of Taxation, General Department of Customs; Government debt management system; and interbank electronic payment system to create an integrated financial management information system (IFMIS).

Ta Anh Tuan, General Director of the State Treasury, said the overall goal set for the State Treasury in the coming period is to build a modern, streamlined and effective treasury to perform well the functions and tasks of the State Treasury in public finance management with one of the three main development pillars by 2030, all the management, administration and service provision activities of the State Treasury will be implemented based on a modern information technology platform, which connects and shares data with ministries, branches, localities and related agencies and units to form a digital treasury. In particular, the State Treasury is organised and operated in the direction of taking advantage of digital data and at the same time, focus on reforming, closely aligning public services with day-to-day tasks to serve citizens, businesses, budgeting units, regulatory agencies and authorities at all levels.

Therefore, the role of TABMIS will be increasingly important, requiring the State Treasury to continue studying and completing the application process on TABMIS, improving system performance in order to create more favourable conditions for users in the work of performing State accounting applicable to TABMIS. In addition, it is also necessary to continue researching to improve the process, improving the performance of other application programmes that interface with TABMIS such as TCS, data warehousing, payment, public services and investment, contributing to support quick and accurate accounting of budget revenues; consistency of data between tax, State Treasury, Customs and finance agencies; administrative reform and providing timely information for management.