The Auditor-General has warned against departments and State-owned entities failing to submit their financial statements to be audited on time as this affects the accountability process in Parliament.
Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke said there were 31 departments and entities that did not submit their financial statements for various reasons.
However, they were concerned that some of them have not submitted their financials for several years now.
She said the law was clear for Ministers and Directors-General to submit their financial statements on time.
Maluleke, who was briefing the standing committee on the auditor-general on Wednesday, said there has been improvements in national and provincial departments that have received clean audits.
There were improvements on departments and entities who submitted credible financial statements.
However, there was a snag where 31 departments and entities failed to submit their financial statements by the end of September, which is the deadline.
The Auditor-General would have to go through the audit process once the financial statements have been submitted.
“The only real blemish is the 31 outstanding audits. They are outstanding because they have not been completed for one reason or the other. It’s something we need to ensure it gets the type of attention it deserves,” said Maluleke.
She told members of the standing committee that failure to submit financial statements to be audited was sending a message.
She said one message was lack of accountability and transparency for those departments and entities to be scrutinised by Parliament.
“As at the cut off date for our analysis, which is September 30, there were a number of audits that remained uncompleted. There are different reasons for that. Some of the reasons are that there is a delay in the audit process. Some of them relate to technical disputes on the audit process. There are those anomalies in the audit process and we consider giving space to auditees to finish these issues, close out the technical disputes and also give every auditee the best chance of finalising their audit properly.
“There are auditees that we were able to finish their audits in the meantime. Some of the 31 auditess that were outstanding we were able to finish nine auditees. Some of them were unqualified at the time we finished their audits, some of them were qualified and some were disclaimed audit opinions. We were able to finish those audits,” said Maluleke.
However, she said they were concerned about this ongoing problem because it would be difficult for Parliament to scrutinise the books of departments and entities if they have not gone through the audit process.
This was part of the accountability mechanism that was set up in Parliament to ensure every cent that has been allocated to departments and entities was accounted for.
The job of Parliament would be affected if departments fail to follow this crucial area of being held accountable.
“There are instances where financials are submitted late. The law is very clear on the need for accounting officers and accounting authorities to submit their financials on time, just as it is clear for the AG to complete audits on time so that those audits and audit reports can end up in the legislatures and the parliamentary system so that they can be scrutinised and accountability processes take place.
“When there is lateness on a repeated basis it starts to compromise transparency and accountability in a way that should worry us all,” said Maluleke.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Politics