ENSURING SOUND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT THROUGH FINANCIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS IN THE UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, GHANA

Abstract

Financial management is an important aspect of public administration of every nation and one of the elements that make government effective. Public institutions had total disregard for financial regulations, internal control mechanisms and widespread financial irregularities which led to financial loss to the economy of Ghana in 2011 This study seeks to find out how sound financial management can be achieved using financial control systems. The analysis was made based on the data collected on the field survey. Questionnaires and key informant interviews were administered and conducted in UDS and other available secondary data was also used. The findings were that; sound financial management and financial control systems are positively related, the University financial control systems are not strong enough to promote its sound financial management this was done by using the Chi-Squared tool. The study recommended that the University should constitute a budgetary monitoring team to enhance its budgetary system, engage more financial administrators to facilitate segregation of duties, acquire good accounting software to facilitate its financial reporting and to engage a proactive professional internal auditor to raise the standard of the University internal audit. The scope of the study should be expanded to meet the standard of generalising research findings in the future.