The Auditor-General, Johnson Akuamoah Asiedu, has applauded heads of public institutions for implementing audit recommendations, leading to a reduction in financial infractions.
Financial irregularities reported by the Auditor-General following public sector audits decreased by over GH¢5.4 billion last year compared to the year before, he said.
Mr Asiedu made this known when he launched this year’s financial audit regional and district auditors conference in Accra last Friday
He also commended staff of the Audit Service across the country for their hard work and dedication to duty which had led to improvements in public sector accounting.
Theme
The conference, attended by auditors from across the country, was on the theme: “Fiscal sustainability and the role of the state auditor.”
Mr Asiedu said the role of the state auditor was to assist in scrutinising the effectiveness of public financial management while identifying areas for improvement and promoting transparency and accountability.
He said the service would continue to identify the gaps and recommend corrective action. He was happy that reports of the service were being utilised for a greater good, and said the service owed that to the people of Ghana.
Mr Asiedu said the 2023 financial audits resulted in the production of 14 statutory reports to Parliament and an additional four performance audit reports, making a total of 18 performance audit reports.
Budgetary support
He was grateful to the government for the increased budgetary support to the service in the last four years, and said it had helped to improve their work and enabled them to cover 92 per cent of their planned audit.
Mr Asiedu added that efforts by the government to also enhance their independence had also yielded positive results which led to the service building 19 offices across the country.
He further mentioned that complaints from clients of the service had decreased in recent times, and attributed the situation to improvement in the quality of their audit.
He said the Audit Service would take away the public and technical universities audit to be put together to reduce the volumes of public corporations report.
A Deputy Minister of Finance, Stephen Amoah, who chaired the function, lauded the Audit Service for the remarkable progress in the last few years.
He said the service successfully completed 6, 166 out of 6, 723 planned audits last year, achieving an impressive rate of 91.72 per cent.
Notably, Dr Amoah said, the Audit Service managed to audit 96.28 per cent of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and 100 per cent of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), a feat he described as the commitment of the service to accountability.
In that regard, Dr Amoah said the 2024 fiscal year had seen a substantial increase in the budgetary allocation for the service, thereby reflecting the commitment of the government to the service.
Dr Amoah, therefore, called on theAudit Service to forge closer collaboration with internal auditors in public institutions.
That, he said, would strengthen internal controls and create a seamless audit process.
A Senior Partner at KPMG, Anthony Sarpong, said the public spent a lot on auditors, and therefore, it was imperative that auditors became accountable and responsible for their service to the nation.
Mr Sarpong said transparency and accountability were foundational pillars for the achievement of such a goal.
These two pillars, he said, served as the bedrock of good governance, which was key to the sustained prosperity of the country.
“In the absence of transparency, good governance and accountability, it will be difficult for the public to hold political, social, and budgetary positions accountable for their choices over our public finances,” he emphasised and said transparency and accountability could not be achieved if it was not linked to protecting the environment and to promote social cohesion.
Citing the progress made by Singapore to buttress his point, Mr Sarpong said, amid the global economic challenges in recent years, Singapore remained one of the resilient global economies.
He said it was necessary that auditors drew lessons from countries such as Singapore and committed themselves to upholding higher standards of transfer
That, he said, would ensure that public finances were managed in a way that contributed broader societal goal.
Additional source : graphic news