Government of Timor-Leste

A delegation from the Ministry of Finance, made up of representatives from the General Directorate of Treasury, the General Directorate of State Finance, the Tax Authority and the Customs Authority, held a meeting with the RAEOA-ZEESM Oe-cusse Authorities at the Palaban Customs Authority building, on July 8, 2019.

The meeting was attended by the President of the RAEOA-ZEESM Authority, Dr. Mari Alkatiri, as well as other members of the RAEOA structure. This meeting resulted from the commitment of the Central Government, based on a letter from the President of the ZEESM-RAEOA Authority addressed to the Prime Minister, Taur Matan Ruak, and also served to complete and implement the provisions of article 20 of Law no. 2/2019, of February 7, on the General State Budget for 2019.

"Today, a delegation from the Ministry of Finance visited RAEOA to continue the coordination initiated on March 21, 2019, related to the processes and progress on the implementation, reintegration and execution of the ZEESM RAEOA budgets according to the financial management system currently applied by the Central Government, "said Joanico Pinto, Director of the Integrated Information and Financial Management Unit, at the opening session, as the representative of the current Minister of Finance and current Vice- Minister of Finance, Sara Lobo Brites, who couldn’t attend this meeting, due to her participation in the Extraordinary Council of Ministers Meeting held on July 8 and 9, 2019, at the Government Palace.

The subject of the presentation of the Ministry of Finance was the requirements and progress in the work already done by the Ministry of Finance and the Regional Secretariat for Finance of RAEOA, namely the integration of the implementation of the RAEOA budget into the GRP system, of the SIGTAS system for the Regional Taxes of RAEOA and the updating (increase speed) to the ASYCUDA System. Also in this presentation session were the issue of practices and procedures used by the Ministry of Finance to manage and control the execution of the Budget, linked to the management of public finances, such as cycles, the General State Budget process, the rule and the payment processing cycle, the accounting reports, the rule and the process of payment of taxes, and lastly on the procedures in the Customs.

RAEOA-ZEESM’s Secretary of Finance, Leónia da C. Monteiro, in her speech during the meeting, acknowledged that, since 2015, RAEOA has asked to apply the Free Balance system, but this has not yet been possible because the cost of these applications is too high.

"At this moment coordination with the Ministry of Finance runs very well and helped to create a draft which may lead to a computer system that demonstrates transparency for the Government Portal", Leónia Monteiro told the Ministry of Finance team during the meeting.

The main objective of the presentations on these services is related to the implementation and execution of the budget of the authority of the RAEOA-ZEESM, in the system of Management of Public Finances or Financial Management known as GRP, also including the update of the tax system known as SIGTAS, and the speed increase of the ASYCUDA World system, which is currently used by Customs.

According to the expected schedule, today, July 9, 2019, the delegation of the Ministry of Finance will make a visit to the buildings where the GRP will be implemented, the Tax Authority system and the Customs Authority system.