The 11th International Conference and general meeting of the International Associa-tion For Treasury Services (IATS) will take place for  three days in Brazzaville, the capital city of the Congo, under the following theme :«The management of payroll and pensions- what is the best course? an integrated computerized management or not  and carrying out of internal control ». The conference was opened on Monday, October 16^th, 2017 by honourable  Thierry Lezin Moungalla, Minister of Communication and media and Spokesman of the government, representing his colleague,  honourable Calixte Nganongo, Minister of finance and budget.

According to the organizers, the conference shows the concern  for member states of IATS to adopt reforms  and to cooperate between them,  in order to modernize their management in a coordinated way at a time when the world is going global and undergoing an economic and  financial crisis.

The participants came from 29 member countries of the Association and are involved in workshops and round tables and considering the following items: «modernizing the payroll (reform of information systems and working methods)», «the respective roles of the authorizing officer and of the accountant in the payment of remunerations and pensions, prerequisites for setting up an internal control system», «internal controls and risk mapping»,  and «existing circuits or to set up  between the pensions department and the public accountant making payments in order to protect the process.

«The item on the agenda is related to the computerized and integrated management system of payroll and pensions and a real concern in our states due to the increasing burden they are fo the budget of states and local communities or other public bodies. So, we considered that it was very important that we all , authorizing officers and accountants, should think over the modernizing, the rationalization and the accounting, as well as the control of  this kind of public expenditure», the chairman of the Association, Henri Loundou, said at the opening session of the conference.

The Congolese Minister of Communication and media reminded that, within the framework of the public finance reform that he has been carrying out for a while, the  government of Congo, through the ministry of finance and budget, has started a project for setting up an integrated management system dealing with all the operations related to  the management of states' expenditure and revenues, including their accounting and follow up. He said that the system will be a useful interface for existing systems in general and for the management system of the payroll in particular, which is known as the HR-PAYROLL system, the aim of which is to modernize the payroll.

Opening the meeting, the spokesman of the Congolese government thought that the conferen-ce of Brazzaville was an occasion to get the views and suggestions of participants, based on their respective countries experience, so as to improve the payroll and pensions management system in the Republic of the Congo.

It is worth reminding that the International Association for Treasury Services (IATS) was created in 2006 in Antananarivo (Madagascar). The founding member states' will was to take up the challenges of the modernization of the management of public finance. The Association is composed of 21 African countries, including four European, 3 Asian and 1 American.  Its general secretariat is in Paris and chaired by Didier Cornillet, a national of France.

 Press Department of the  Ministry of finance