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Auditor General’s 2024 Report exposes costly contract overpayments in Govt. spending
Kaieteur News – Auditor General Deodat Sharma on Thursday handed over his 21st report on the Public Accounts of Guyana to Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir.
The 2024 Auditor General Report covers the accounts of Guyana, as well as ministries, departments, and regions. Sharma also presented a special performance audit report on the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) for the period January 1, 2021 to June 30, 2024.
Auditor General Deodat Sharma
Notably, both reports were handed over at a ceremony held at the Parliament Building in Georgetown. The reports will be tabled in the 13th Parliament of Guyana once it convenes. The reports will become public after being tabled.
In his address, Sharma noted that his office has been involved in training to better understand the contract management and public procurement. “During the fiscal year 2024, the Works and Structures Department was involved in training of staff from various ministries and departments in the following areas understanding public procurement, common procurement, fraud schemes and summary red flags and contract management,” the AG said.
He noted that as a result of this training, when issues of overpayment arise, his office is now able to recover those cost. The Auditor General also noted that those cost are also not disputed by the contractors of the ministries and departments.
“The contractors do not dispute the audit office in terms of our findings we have been finding through the engineering department overpayments, they are still there and that’s an area we will have to try to improve in terms of I prefer prevention is better than cure,” Sharma said.
Further, he noted that consultants as well as accounting officers should also be held responsible when issues like overpayment arise. “So you need to hold those consultants responsible if you could get that being done, then I think when there is an overpayment, not only the accounting officer we could hold responsible but also the consultants,” he added.
Another training his office was involved in is on auditing of the extractive industries, which was conducted by the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation (CAAF).. However, he noted that he is now building the oil and gas department.
Moreover, the Auditor General also revealed that his office is now doing real-time auditing of some projects, as opposed to the traditional post-mortem audits.
Further, Sharma also noted that recommendations made by his office are increasingly being acted upon, with support from the new Finance Secretary. “In fact the number of recommendations have now been reduced tremendously, there have been improvements in terms of logbooks almost all ministries have been presented their logbooks, there have been improvements in terms of fuel management,” he noted.
Notably, the report Sharma presented marked his 21st Auditor General Report to the National Assembly, since he took on that role in 2005. It also marks the 14th consecutive year that he has submitted his report before the statutory deadline. Also in his address, the Auditor General noted, “As this is my 21st report of the audit office under my tenure I will now have issued more reports than former Auditor General Mr. Reginald Farnum who presented 14 reports and Mr. Anand Goolsaran who presented only nine reports.”
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