THERE’S widespread lack of transparency and accountability in government expenditures, a major audit of government accounts, revealed.
Missing payment vouchers from various ministries totalling more than $54 million could not be located, the audit, carried out by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG), said.
Acting Auditor General Robert Cohen yesterday released his office’s findings.
He said one of the worrying problems identified during the 2012 and 2013 financial year with national accounts is lack of transparency and accountability with expenditures.
As a result, the office stated that the quality of the SIG financial statements and supporting source documentation require much improvement.
“Our audits on the Ministry of Finance & Treasury and line ministries accounts and records found a significant proportion of original procurement documents were not able to be located and so we were not able to verify a large portion of expenditure,” the audit summery revealed.
The SIG Missing Payment Vouchers (PV) for 2011 and 2012 which totalled more than $54 million included the following Ministries:
· Ministry of Agriculture Livestock – 8 PVs of $3.53 million
· Ministry of Culture and Tourism – 5 PVs of $5.41 million
· Ministry of Health and Medical Services – 14 PVs of $3.72 million
· Ministry of Land, Housing and Survey – 6 PVs of $3.53 million
· Ministry of Provincial Government – 5 PVs of $7.36 million
· Ministry of Education and Human Resources – 9 PVs of $18.18 million
· Other Ministries – 84 PVs of $12.4 million
The audit report stated that other weaknesses with payments included incomplete recording of revenue receipts, bank reconciliations were incomplete, insufficient evidence to support the existence of the SIG assets and that fact that internal controls within the expenditure and revenue processes still do not provide sufficient assurance as to the veracity of recording of transactions for both the line Ministries and MoFT.
It further stated that another weakness in internal controls identified included lack of action for the recovery of non-acquittals of imprests.
The OAG 2014 annual report covers the results of audits performed on the national government accounts, the nine provincial governments’ accounts, and 13 state owned enterprises and statutory authorities during the 2012 and 2013 financial years.
By EDNAL PALMER
