Cash management includes operations within the budget year that handle
cash flows into the government, payments made by the government, use of
funds while they are held by the government, and accommodation strate-gies when revenues fail to cover approved expenditures. Payments in and
out should be made through a single treasury account, not through indi-vidual agency accounts, to maintain control and accountability and to
obtain the advantages of cash pooling. Revenues must be received and
recorded to the appropriate accounts, and payments must be made on a
timely basis to legitimate claimants. The timing of revenue flows into the
treasury will seldom match payments from the treasury and, even in a govern-ment with a balanced annual budget, there will be periods in which
accumulated revenue will be less than accumulated expenditures. One task
of cash management is to develop short-term mechanisms to bridge those
differences without payment arrears (forced loans from suppliers).
20
During
other periods of the year, the treasury will have cash balances, and the second
task of cash management is to make productive use of those funds in secure
short-term investments.
21
Balancing the return from those assets with the
need for cash to meet payment obligations is a fundamental resource
management issue.
An alternative approach is used in parts of Francophone Africa.
Disbursements and revenue remain centralized for local governments,22
and the national treasury is responsible for managing all these cash flows.
That method reduces the need for local capacity in this component of fiscal
administration—because the capacity remains centralized. In general
application, this approach will almost certainly lead to concerns about lack
of financial control by localities and suspicions that funds are not being
credited properly (Winter 2003). In this scheme, other elements of fiscal
administration can be local while cash management remains centralized.