The main purpose of implementing IFMIS is to improve financial management in Government.

Specifically, the objectives of IFMIS Division are:

• Controlling over expenditure in Government;
• Production of timely financial reports;
• Enhancing transparency and accountability in government.

BACKGROUND TO NEW IFMIS

The New IFMIS is Malawi’s third attempt at installing a government financial management system. The selection of the SAP platform and its implementation approach was premised on the lessons learnt from the previous attempts and mistakes corrected.

Procurement of the New IFMIS System started in 2015. This process was Financed by World Bank under the Financial Reporting and Oversight Improvement Project (FROIP) in Malawi. Unfortunately, the FROIP project expired before acceptance of a successful bidder in April 2018.

The procurement process was an open tender and Malawi government decided to proceed with the procurement process using its own resources and thereafter awarded the contract to the successful bidder (Twenty Third Centuries) in March 2019.

Government of Malawi signed the contract with the supplier in March 2019.

The New IFMIS (SAP Based IFMIS) was rolled out to all MDAs from 1 July, 2021 having been piloted on ten votes in 2020-2021 financial year with five core system modules and functionality. The pilot implementation approach was a change from the original plan of a ‘Big Bang’ approach in which all system modules and functionality were to be implemented in all MDAs at once. The five modules that were implemented during the pilot phase include Budget & Funds Management, Cash & Bank, General Ledger (GL), Procurement and Payment (Accounts Payable). Assets and Project Management modules were rolled out partially.

The SAP roll out in July, 2021 was based on the 2020-2021 pilot system functionality of selected system modules however, with this coverage of more MDAs, Government switched from cheque payment method to Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payment method with centralized pool bank accounts at Reserve Bank of Malawi. The centralized pool bank accounts replaced positive pay bank accounts which were opened for each vote.