Eliaba Yona Damundu the Social Policy Specialist with UNICEF speaking to Eye Radio on Friday 11th Feb. 2022. Photo: Obaj Okuj/Eye Radio

The UN children’s agency UNICEF has trained at least more than 30 officials on public financial management in Yambio Town of Western Equatoria State.

The training provide capacity building to state ministries of finance officials on accountability, monitoring and transparency.

The project which was launched in 2020 aims at strengthening national and subnational public financial management mechanisms in the country.

It targets three states of Central Equatoria, Western Equatoria and Northern Bahr El-Ghazal states respectively.

The project is being implemented by the national ministry of finance and planning in collaboration with the National Revenue Authority with support of joint sustainable development goals from UNDP and UNICEF.

The more than one million-dollar co-funded project is a two-year scheme intended to increase budget allocation to the social service sector in the country.

Eliaba Yona Damundu is the Social Policy Specialist with UNICEF.

“The capacity building component enables the state ministries that are responsible for reporting all these funds given to them by their state ministry of finance to report back to Juba, the treasury so that there is a complete circle of disbursement and reporting”, Mr. Eliaba Yona spoke to Eye Radio in Yambio Town on Friday.

Meanwhile Mr. Tambua Aquila, the director for planning and Statistics at the ministry of finance, Western Equatoria state said;

“We are sure that the training has really made the ministry to account for each cash that have been received either money from national government or from local collection within the state.”

The project also aims to secure by 2022 a 2% increase in budget allocation to national priorities and social services which work towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Others are allocating greater resource to critical social services and ensuring their efficient, effective and transparent utilization, social cohesion and benefit all people, especially the most vulnerable children and women.

Public budget allocations to social sectors remain low in South Sudan, with in 2019/20 only 1% of public spending going to health, 5% to education and 2% to social and humanitarian affairs.

The project is aiming at supporting capacity building of the ministry of finance and line ministry practitioners around budget preparation.