Newsletter 73- Unqualified initiatives and qualified audit reports- 28 May 2010
Last week’s newsletter was based on the performance agreement signed by the minister of co-operative governance and traditional affairs, Mr Sicelo Shiceka. In the agreement, the minister committed himself to achieving a number of targets by 2014. If met, these targets are set to improve service delivery. This week’s newsletter will focus on one of these targets, which is that all municipalities in the country are to achieve clean audits by 2014.
The pursuit of clean audits as required by the performance agreement is not a new initiative. It stems from a programme called Operation Clean Audits 2014, which was launched on 16 July 2009.
The main objective of the programme is to ensure that by the year 2014 all 283 municipalities, provincial departments, and all related government institutions should achieve clean audits. The road map to achieving this is set out as follows:
- Between 2010 and 2011, no municipality or provincial department should receive adverse disclaimer audit opinions
- By 2012, at least 60% of provincial departments and all the municipalities must achieve unqualified audit opinions;
- By 2013, 75% of municipalities and provincial departments should achieve unqualified audits; and
- By 2014, there must be 100% clean audits in all provinces and all the municipalities.
In the past few years, the state of play in municipalities has been as follows:
- For the 2006/7 financial year, 38 of municipalities (14%) did not submit their financial reports. As a result they could not be included in the auditor-general’s 2006/7 report;
- In the year ended June 2007 there were 99 disclaimed audit opinions;
- In the year ended June 2008 there were 86 disclaimed audit opinions. This was a 5% decrease from the previous year;
- For the 2007/8 financial year, 152 of municipalities (58%) received qualified, disclaimer, or adverse audit opinions; and
- For the 2007/8 financial year, 67 of municipalities (25%) were found to have unauthorised, fruitless, and wasteful expenditure which led to this audit them qualified.
More than half of all municipalities obtained qualified audits in the 2007/8 financial year.
- Nachi Majoe
by
nmajoe
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last modified
2010-05-28 09:41
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