Archive for December 15th, 2010
Ministries’ accounts no value
(CNS):The auditor general has revealed that the overall consolidated report on core government’s accounts will be of limited value as, he says, he has had to disclaim his opinions on nearly all of the financial statements submitted by ministries and he does not expect the situation to improve for the most recent financial year. Speaking at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting on Tuesday, Alastair Swarbrick said government’s accounts up to 2007/08 are “fundamentally unreliable” because of “significant deficiencies” in the supporting documentation and information.
In the first “General Report” on government accounts since the one published on the 2004/05 financial year, which is expected to be made public this week, the auditor says that he cannot give a clear view of the reliability of the financial statements up to 2009 because of the lack of information. He said that the information up to the year end of 2008 is of little value.
The country’s independent auditor also revealed that the output statements cannot be relied upon and were also of very limited value. “The systems and processes are not in place to effectively produce the information,” Swarbrick told PAC. “It is my office’s view that in their current guise they do not provide effective public accountability for the performance of ministries and portfolios.”
He said the reports don’t clearly indicate what a ministry or portfolio has actually achieved during the various financial years and in most cases he has had to disclaim or qualify his opinion.
Swarbrick revealed, however, that the statutory authorities and government companies had, with some notable exceptions, made better progress than core government. He said that as well as catching up with backlog, the financial statements were in many cases more reliable and the numbers and information were reasonable. He revealed that, based on commitments by officials, the authorities’ backlogs should all be up to date and have submitted their 09/10 accounts to his office by February of 2011.
The auditor general noted that, while government entities were working on catching up with their accounts, it was important to begin to improve the quality of those financial statements for them to be accountable to the people. Despite the efforts to catch up, Swarbrick warned that there were still going to be issues concerning the last financial year, which ended on 30 June.
As various chief officers and chief financial officers came to discus their current situation with PAC on Tuesday, it was apparent that there was still considerable misunderstanding on the part of government’s accountants about what was expected of them when it came to submissions. A number of entities stated that they had submitted their accounts to the auditor for 09/10 by the deadline; however, Swarbrick noted that what they had submitted fell short of the requirements under the Public Management and Finance Law.
Chair of the committee, Ezzard Miller, said he could not understand why, when the people involved were qualified CPAs, they did not seem to know what was expected under that law. Swarbrick said that once the backlog was addressed it was clear there was a pressing need for an education process about what constitutes a submission.