The institution of Financial Advisor in any organization is a salient pillar of good governance and accountability. In a government organization, Integrated Finance serves as the sine qua non for most efficacious utilization of available funds. The Ministry of Defence in particular, with its prodigious and multifarious expenditure, stands to gain enormously if its resources are harnessed in the most productive manner possible.
The Indian economy’s development over the past decades has given rise to complex challenges. Policy makers thus needed to make institutional changes in financial management systems. In the system of Financial Advice, the Financial Advisers are expected to provide independent financial advice to the administrative authorities in decision making for achieving organisational goals. Allocated resources are to be spent timely and prudently in the prescribed manner to achieve predefined outcomes. Integrated Financial Advice (IFA) in defence has also developed and evolved in recent years.
Changes in public financial management across the globe have necessitated India to revisit its traditional methods of managing and depicting its public finances. One of the major changes envisaged is a quest to migrate gradually to accrual accounting from the traditional cash-based accounting.