Latest update January 17th, 2025 6:30 AM
Finance Minister says Auditor General’s Report…Lacked adequate explanations for sensitive issues
Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh has said that it was regrettable that in some instances the Auditor General’s Report did not in every case reflect the explanations that would have been proffered by the various Government ministries and departments.
The Auditor General is required by law to have included in the report explanations for issues that raised an eyebrow with him.
This was done in some cases where the Auditor General’s Report reflects some of the explanations, but in others this was not done.
“I would say that in the overwhelming majority of instances the issues that have been reported by the Auditor General have explanations that in many cases would have been offered by the respective Government ministries and departments.”
The Finance Minister also stated that what was also regrettable was that some of the issues were being highlighted sensationally in the media when in fact if one were to understand and examine them properly one would see that there is no question of impropriety at all.
Rather, there would be very plausible explanations.
He noted that in the absence of these explanations in the report, the head of the various budget agencies would be required to appear before the Public Accounts Committee, which is a Parliamentary committee that scrutinizes the report and its findings.
One of the minister’s recommendations for reports in future would be for it to include, to a greater extent, the responses and explanations that are provided by the respective agencies.
This newspaper was reliably informed that one of the reasons for the lack of explanations in various instances was the fact that the Audit Office was severely understaffed, resulting in a lot of the explanations not being processed fully.
When the report was presented to the National Assembly recently, Auditor General Deodat Sharma had stated that the delay, which was close to a year, was due to the lack of adequate resources.
The Auditor General at that time called for the report to be debated in the National Assembly as early as possible.
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