The
government audited financial statement for 2012-2013 tabled on Tuesday before
lawmakers at the National Assembly by the Auditor General has revealed a lot
about the accuracy or inaccuracy of the country’s domestic debt data, and lack
of proper auditing of payment vouchers and other documents of the Central Bank
of The Gambia in 2012 and 2013.
This
has caused the Auditor General to reiterate the call or demand on the relevant
authority to allow for proper auditing of such vouchers and documents at the
Central Bank, henceforth.
Although
the report of the Auditor General covered both the Ministry of Finance and the
Central Bank of The Gambia, the latter, however, has a huge stake in the debt
information and payment voucher challenges raised at the PAC/PEC session on
Tuesday.
“There
is a risk that domestic debt information by the Central Bank is not accurate
and complete leading to misstatement of the financial statement,” the Auditor
General said.
“We
recommend that all domestic debt information is captured by the Ministry of
Finance, and the documentation remained outstanding up to the time of
finalising the report.”
Section
158 of the Financial Instructions was also quoted as stating that: “The
originals of payment vouchers and supporting document will be filed in
numerical order by month and year by the Treasury Directorate, to be available
for audit and other inspection purposes.”
Talking
also about payment vouchers and other documents such as credit and memos, the
Auditor General said these vouchers and documents amounting to D175,466,433.64
for the year ended 2012 and payment vouchers amounting to D444,208,111.44 for
the year ended 2013 were “not presented for audit”.
“We
recommend that all payment vouchers are filed in numerical order by month and
year as required by the Financial Instructions,” he said.
It
is always essential that we are accountable for what we do, especially at the
public domain where national resources are entrusted to public trustees.
In
this case of the country’s debt information and payment voucher auditing, we
couldn’t really determine what went wrong, or really pinpoint at anyone for the
huge fiscal debt leap beyond the GDP ceiling in 2012 and 2013.
However,
accurate national financial information and regular auditing must be respected
and seen to be done, to always give a clear picture and fair outlook of our
economy, as well as help the nation to plan its economic path well.
“It is not only what we do, but also what we
do not do for which we are accountable.”
John
Baptiste Moliere
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