Over 120 Public Officers Begin UB Financial Management Training

More than 120 public officers are now enrolled in a special financial management training course, being administered by the University of Belize (UB). The first-ever Public Financial Management (PFM) Certification Programme was launched under the Strengthening Public Expenditure Management (SPEM) Project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank. The project is aimed at increasing efficiency in the public service and ensuring greater accountability of public funds. The course is offered in both fully online and blended models to accommodate the schedules of the officers, who began orientation last week.  Dr. Frieda Palma, Director of Open and Distance Learning at UB, explained that the course was developed over the past year, beginning with a skills gap analysis for the public service. 

Dr. Frieda Palma, Open and Distance Learning Director, UB: “We’ve derived a program, a certification program for public financial management that has a total of 13 courses. And on the 18th of August we did our orientation so participants are still doing the orientation right now. It’s just online to become oriented with our platform. They become oriented with the tools and resources they’ll have access to for the duration of the program. For the certification  program we have five tracks. So we have the accounting track, we have a budget track, we have a treasury  management track, we have procurement and of course internal audit. So over the next three months participants will be engaged within these courses and so they are very much interactive, they are very engaging. And so we running two different groups. We have one group that’s doing the course in a blended modality and we have another group that’s doing the course in an online asynchronous modality. So it’s the best accommodate their schedule, their work schedule too as well. So we have over a total of 82 participants and that’s just in the blended track for the online track we’re at over 45 participants.”

Classes for the programme, officially begin on September 1.