Paper Title
Barriers To Sound Financial Management In The City Of Tshwane, South Africa

Abstract
A review of the relevant literature shows that the quality of municipal services that are routinely provided to residents of the City of Tshwane depends on the capacity of the City of Tshwane to utilize modern financial management and accounting procedures for performance monitoring and evaluation exercises. Fiscal discipline, good governance and service delivery depend on the degree to which prudent financial, auditing and accounting procedures are implemented by finance employees working for the City of Tshwane. The aim of study was to explain the relationship between the degree of adherence to the South African Municipal Finance Management Act (Act number 56 of 2003) and the degree of customer satisfaction with the quality of municipal services that are provided to customers in the City of Tshwane. Data was collected from a stratified random sample of 146 employees of the City of Tshwane who were responsible for providing financial services to cutomers. Data was collected by using a structured, pre-tested and validated questionnaire of study. Statistical methods such as frequency tables, cross-tab analyses and logit analysis were used for performing data analyses. Efficiency in financial management was assessed by assessing the degree of adherence of employees to the Muncipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) based on a composite index defined by Kaiser, Crother, Kelly, Luiselli, O�Shea, Ota, Passos, Schleip & Wuster (2013). The study showed that 89% of the 146 employees who were selected for the study demonstrated adequate adherence to the Act, whereas 11% of employees failed to do so by the same standards. The study found that the degree of adherence of employees to the MFMA was significantly influenced by 3 factors. These 3 factors were degree of skills in financial accounting and auditing, duration of service, and degree of job satisfaction, in a decreasing order of strength. The results also showed that there was a statistically significant association between the quality of financial and auditing services that were provided to customers and the degree of adherence to the Muncipal Finance Management Act. Keywords- City of Tshwane, South African Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), Auditing and accounting skills, Probit regression