The Ministry of Finance is not an editing house
Oct 18, 2016, , http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....ot-an-editing-house/
The Ministry of Finance is attempting, in the most ridiculous manner, to discredit the Report of the Auditor General for the year 2015. The report is an opinion on the conduct of financial affairs of the various government Ministries and departments.
The Report has not suggested any improvement in public accountability since the new government took office. In fact, there may be persons who would not be wrong to argue that the state of public accountability, judging from the 2015 reports, seems to be a worse state than it was in 2014.
The Ministry of Finance can do much better than the approach it is taking to discredit the report. The many failings, identified in the report, are not necessarily a case of corruption. They can, in the main, be problems with the accounting systems, problems which no one expected the new government to fix overnight.
What must have upset the government, however, are the many revelations which indicate that the APNU+AFC coalition has been doing some of the very things which they criticized the PPPC administration of doing.
NICIL has been holding on to its collections. It has not transferred, as APNU and the AFC had once suggested was part of the law, its revenues into the Consolidated Fund. It has only transferred a part of its total earnings.
A number of bank books which APNU and the AFC, when in opposition, had said constituted a parallel treasury, are still in existence. The very things that were deemed to be wrong under the PPPC have, seemingly, now become right.
The government is obviously embarrassed and instead of specifically addressing individually each adverse finding, it has now adopted the PPPC tactic of discrediting the messenger, in this case the Audit Report.
It could not have done worse at this task than what is being reported. The Ministry of Finance is reported to have said that it was usual for the draft report to be sent to them for editing before being published. What poppycock!
There is nothing in the law which requires that the Audit Office, which is a constitutional and independent body, should send the draft report to the Ministry for editing.
There is a provision in the Audit Act which requires that at the conclusion of any audit, the Auditor General shall provide the relevant Head of a budget agency, or the governing body in the case of other public entities, with a draft report including findings and recommendations, and the Head of the budget agency or the governing body shall provide a written response to the Auditor General within thirty days, which response the Auditor General shall include in his report to be submitted for laying before the National Assembly.
If the wording of the Act is examined closely, it does not imply that any draft report should go to any ministry. It indicates that the draft report in respect to any Budget agency or governing body shall have the right of response to any finding and recommendation.
There is no provision which states that a draft of the entire Report should go to the Ministry of Finance. It places the onus on the Heads of the Budget agencies and governing bodies to respond to the draft findings and recommendations.
The Audit of Public Accounts is not the only type of audit which the Auditor General is authorized to conduct. He is authorized to carry out other types of audits. The provision of right of response covers all draft audit reports in respect to agencies of the government.
If the lawmakers wanted the draft of the entire Audit of the Public Accounts to go for editing or comments by the Ministry of Finance, it would have explicitly spelt this out.
What the Auditor General is required to do is to give the respective Budget agencies and governing bodies the opportunity to respond to his findings and recommendations with respect to their agencies.
He has done this. If the report of the accounts of 2015 is examined, following any finding is a section which gives the various responses provided by the various agencies.
The Ministry of Finance is not an editing house. It should deal with the individual charges made in the report relating to its work. It should not, as it has incompetently attempted to do, discredit the work of the entire Report into the Public Accounts of Guyana for 2015.