The Auditor-General has made damning findings against the financial statements of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), saying its books were in a shambles after it received an adverse audit opinion.
Senior manager in the office of the Auditor-General, Ignatius Fourie told Parliament on Wednesday that NSFAS has not been able to balance its books over the last five years.
He said in the last few years, NSFAS received qualified audit opinions. In its latest report, it received an adverse audit opinion.
Fourie said NSFAS submitted its 2021/22 financial statements to Parliament one year later than required, because there were many issues that were not corrected.
Officials from the office of the Auditor-General were on Wednesday briefing the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on higher education on the financial statements of NSFAS.
Fourie told the committee that when they audited the books of NSFAS, they found a number of mistakes.
“We audited this, but we had major findings in terms of reconciliation. There was a lot data that wasn’t supported, that we couldn’t audit, there were errors in the calculations. We raised a number of findings on the close out project,” said Fourie.
He said they allowed NSFAS to make corrections on a number of issues they identified in the report.
NSFAS submitted its adjusted results in March last year.
“We still had material findings and we then issued our report for 2021/22 on July 31, 2023, one year later than legislatively required,” said Fourie.
But they still made an adverse audit opinion against NSFAS.
“What an adverse audit means is that there were a number of material misstatements in the financial statements and the figures in the financial statements are not reliable. They are not fairly stated, and that’s the conclusion we reached, in terms of the financial statements,” said Fourie.
They found that there was no reconciliation between what is owed by universities to NSFAS and what is owed by NSFAS to universities.
There was a delay in submitting the annual report by NSFAS to Parliament. It was finally tabled in December last year.
NSFAS received qualified audit opinions over the last four years and in the 2021/22 financial year, it received an adverse audit opinion.
“The report has been unchanged for five years, with material findings,” said Fourie.
“On adverse findings, let me give context. In 2019/20, we identified there is a big difference between what was reported by the institutions, as owing to NSFAS, and what was reported by NSFAS in terms of similar balances.
“Those balances were not included in the NSFAS records. We qualified the financial statements for 2019/20, based on those differences we had between the institutions’ records and the NSFAS records. The main reason for those differences is that since 2017 no reconciliations were done between the records of the institutions and the students and those of NSFAS.
“In terms of addressing those matters, NSFAS started the process of reconciling between the institutions’ students data and their own data to determine any overall underpayments to students. There is various reasons why over and underpayments can happen, because they do payments on the original registration and if there is changes, like students changing their course, there could be an impact on that,” said Fourie.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
Politics