Presenting its findings on the report, the audit firm detected that there was lack of recent assessment of the financial and/or commercial viability of the savings bank operations after comparing the operational costs vis-à-vis the income derived from savings bank activities to assess its operational self-sufficiency.
“Collections from the savings are deposited into a non- interest bearing current account maintained at the Trust Bank instead of being invested in an interest bearing account/investment in order use the income derived from such investment to off-set the interest paid on the savings of the respective customers at average rate of 3.5% during 2021.”the report shows.
The report, further indicated that there are reporting challenges in respect of the software, which was reported to have been reported to the software service provider but they are yet to be resolved.
After this observation, the auditors recommended to the management to carry out a comprehensive review of the savings bank activities in order to assess its financial viability as an independent product.
“This assessment should inform management on the appropriate strategic options to be adopted in respect of the said product.”
They further recommended to management to follow up on system issues with the software service provider for their timely resolution.
The audit report added that the Corporation is maintaining a centralised inventory management system whereby stock of stamps is maintained at the head office and released to the branches based on request.
“However, we observed that there was no separate inventory code in the general ledger to record the stock released to the individual branches during the year and as a result inventory balances held at the respective branches were not reported in the general ledger during the year.”
Stating the implications of the above, the auditors further revealed that ‘failure to post inventory into the respective branch accounts upon release of stock from the central stores to the branches would overstate the in-year stock balance held at the main store and understate in-year the stock balances held at the respective branches.’
Thus, auditors recommended that separate general ledger codes be created for various branches and such codes should be debited at the time of release of inventory from the main store to the respective branches.
