Public Finance Management Act

With this Act, consolidation and amendments to provisions in the Budget Act, 2001, repealed the Public Finance and Accountability Act, 2003 and introduced sections for the management of petroleum revenue. Consequently, affecting the Budget calendar by reducing the budget preparation and approval process from twelve to nine months.

The Pub­lic Fi­nance and Man­age­ment bill (PFMA) was passed by par­lia­ment on 27^th No­vem­ber 2014. The Pres­i­dent assented to it on 23^rd Feb­ru­ary 2015 and it gazetted on 6^th March 2015. Though the Act was amended even be­fore it could make its first an­niver­sary, the amend­ments did­n’t af­fect the bud­get­ing process as it re­mained in its to­tal­ity in the Prin­ci­pal Act.

With this par­tic­u­lar process, im­prove­ment in tax col­lec­tion was most likely to be re­al­ized. Un­like un­der the Bud­get Act of 2001, where tax pro­pos­als and al­lo­ca­tions were de­bated well into the start of the fi­nan­cial year which used to dis­rupt the rev­enue col­lec­tion tar­gets be­cause some taxes rev­enues were re­jected, oth­ers re­duced though new ones could be rarely in­tro­duced.