Cabinet notes call for stricter audits
2012-03-08 20:33
Cape Town - The president's co-ordinating council has proposed more rigorous auditing of state departments, Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane said on Thursday.
He said when Cabinet met on Wednesday it noted the council's call for interaction with the auditor general to enhance the credibility of clean audit reports, because such findings did not necessarily tell "the whole story".
"The audit can come, you get a clean audit, but after two months you discover there is another transaction that did not go well in the same institution."
The minister suggested it may be problematic that audits were conducted on the basis of sampling.
"Auditors mostly deal with samples. They target specific areas. It is important for us to ensure that in the systems that we have in place, we should not be focusing our performance on the audit, because the audit does not tell you the whole story.
It tells you a trend in how you manage your finances.
"Sometimes it has happened that after you receive an audit that is positive, two, three months down the line you discover that there is a case of corruption or maladministration or something else."
The proposal comes against the background of government complaints about private auditing firms' work for state entities.
Transport Minister Sibusiso Ndebele said this week he would report Deloitte & Touche to the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants over a R11m financial "clean-up" it did for the Road Traffic Management Corporation.
- SAPA