Treasury authorities digitize public finance reform

The workshop of International Treasury Service.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Mr. Ta Anh Tuan, Acting General Director of the State Treasury said that as a member of the Association, Vietnam State Treasury always considered the activities of the Association as a forum to share, exchange and learn about the experience in management and operations of treasury and public accounting.

"The seminar took place at the right time for the State Treasury, Vietnam is implementing a modernization process aimed at building an electronic treasury, a very important step in the roadmap for implementing the Vietnam State Treasury development strategy in 2020, Ta Anh stressed.

Deputy Minister of Finance Tran Xuan Ha said that at the moment, “digital” is playing an important role in economic and social activities. The process of reforming and modernizing treasury operations, especially the reform of public finance procedures, is a central focus of the State Treasury. The digitization of treasury operations plays an important role in this modernization process.

Recognizing the role of electronics and digitization in treasury activities, in recent years, Vietnam State Treasury has made great efforts in applying information technology for treasury operations such as: State revenue collection and collection coordination (with banks and tax / customs); the budget collection system of the Bank; Bilateral payment system of the Bank with the Treasury; Cash flow forecasting system in treasury management; online services...

"Although significant initial results have been achieved, the implementation of electronic and digitalization of the State Treasury of Vietnam still has some shortcomings such as the incomplete implementation of all treasury operations. The efficiency is not really high due to the fact that the management of treasury is not complete," Mr.Ha said.

According to Deputy Minister Tran Xuan Ha, in order to digitize treasury operations, Vietnam aims to further improve the policy mechanism on state budget revenue and expenditure, public finance management and public assets management. On that basis, standardize the operations of the treasury. In addition, there should be solutions to develop electronic and digitized IT systems in line with the mechanism of decentralization of budget management between central and local authorities.

"The choice of electronic / digitalization is also important in the context of technology development. Followed by the retraining of staff and high quality human resources to operate this management system. "

According to Mr. Didier Cornillet, Secretary General of the International Association of Treasury Services, digital is increasingly affecting socio-economic activities. The deployment is often uneven between countries as well as within each nation. However, that trend is indispensable, and the State acts as a facilitator of this trend by offering service packages to customers and deploying new approaches for customers and managers. This development affects the services of the state as well as of the local government.

Accordingly, in today's era, digitalization will be the lever for better service, the vector for economic development, the cost reduction for the state budget. In addition, digitization will be more effective and secure.

At the workshop, 14 members from countries in the International Treasury Association discussed the content of modernizing treasury agencies through digitalization of treasury operations, such as the different areas in which digitalization can be implemented in relation to accounting - expenditure control - collection control; issues, strategies selected, benefits and constraints in digital deployment; presenting the experiences of member countries and discussing with experts of some international organizations.

Acting General Director of the State Treasury, Ta Anh Tuan, said that with the experiences that members of the Association shared in the workshop, this is a good opportunity for Vietnam State Treasury and the Treasury to learn together to build. Improve the treasury system, reform and modernize the treasury operations to strengthen the management of public finance and state budget effectively.