Auditor General pushes for stronger financial controls

Fraud cases are on the rise despite the commendable strides against graft, the Auditor General, Obadiah Biraro, said yesterday.He was speaking during a one-day consultative session organised by the House’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to discuss how efforts against the misuse and embezzlement of public funds can be harmonised.“Fraud cases are rising, especially forgery of records to withdraw funds. This is mainly due to a lack of appropriate internal control mechanisms. There is need to strengthen internal controls and enforce them,” he said.No transaction should be made without going through due process, Obadiah observed during a presentation on the role of the Office of Auditor General (OAG) in good public finances and property management.The meeting was attended by ministers, permanent secretaries and heads of other top relevant institutions.We are on the right path, especially because key tools are in place as part of the country’s public finance management reforms, Biraro said.“But some challenges remain. We have to deal with them in order to achieve good public financial management or clean audit reports”.The challenges, he said, include institutions that do not implement recommendations of the Auditor General as per article 74 of the Organic Law on State Property.In the OAG’s 2011 report, only 49 per cent of recommendations in the previous year’s report were implemented. In 2010, fifty-three per cent of the recommendations were implemented.Biraro called for improvement in the quality of accounting records.Also cited were cases of unsupported expenditure and wasteful expenditure.In the 2011/2012 report, expenditure worth Rwf10,668,450,282 lacked sufficient supporting documents, while Rwf1,612,460,075 was wastefully spent. “There is need for every stakeholder to step up and help improve public accountability,” he said, stressing the need to adhere to existing laws, regulations and strengthening of internal controls.Pitchette Kampeta Sayinzoga, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, cited high staff turnover, late submission of monthly and annual reports, and low capacity of accountants, among the main challenges.Sayinzoga said the government was keen on bridging the skills gap.She said the target was to improve clean audit reports by at least 20 per cent annually over the next three years.But the MPs rejected the excuse of the lack of capacity.Speaker Rose Mukantabana and other lawmakers criticised the “generalisation of lack of capacity” as a major cause of fraud.“We should be really careful because I do not think that issues such as miss-posting are due to lack of training,” she said.MP Jean Thierry Karemera, a member of PAC, insisted that institutions must be tasked to be more responsible and ensure clean audits as part of their performance contracts.The head of the Rwanda Public Procurement Agency (RPPA), Augustus Seminega, said measures to ensure compliance should include “improvement of the legal framework.”The meeting was expected to conclude with resolutions to help reign in fraud.Officials from NPPA, law enforcement institutions, and other departments also participated in the discussions.Transparency International ranks Rwanda the least corrupt country in the Eastern Africa region.

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Auditor General pushes for stronger financial controls