Regional, Local Authorities : Duties of Public Accounting Officers Defined

Within the framework of accelerating the decentralisation process, the President of the Republic, Paul Biya on November 7, 2023 signed a decree which defines some duties and lays down the benefits of Public Accounting Officers assigned to regional and local authorities. The said duties, as prescribed by the Presidential text, are applicable to Regions, Councils, City Councils and Subdivisional Councils. In essence, the decree repeals provisions of the December 5, 1994 text which defined the status and duties of municipal revenue collectors.
With regards to the duties of the Public Accounting Officer, Article 22 of the decree spells out some of them. Amongst them is implementing budgetary and accounting regulations, collecting authorized local public revenue, settling the expenses of regional/local authorities, financial, budgetary and accounting analysis, custody and safekeeping of funds, vouchers and securities, and controlling and clearing the transactions of revenue services. The Public Accounting Officer shall also produce annual financial statements comprising the balance sheet, income statement, the cash flow tables, as well as making available periodic and annual financial statements. 
The duties of the Officers of decentralised institutions are generally divided into three main parts, which include, revenue, expenditure and assets.  With regards to revenue, they will basically control collection orders and settlement of claims, and the formal regularity of reductions and cancellations of revenue vouchers within the limits of information available to them. As concerns expenditure, the Public Accounting Officer shall give exact budgetary allocation of expenditure in accordance with the principles defined by budgetary and accounting nomenclature, according to type or purpose. They shall equally control expenditure assignment and discharge na...