AG reports improvement in government audit outcomes

Auditor General Tsakani Maluleke says there has been an improvement in the audit outcomes of national and provincial departments for the 2023/24 financial year.

Maluleke was briefing a joint meeting of parliament’s finance chairpersons on Tuesday.

While there has been a general improvement in audit and accounting processes, she has raised concern that the biggest, most impactful government departments are not showing the same improvement.

Some good news from the office of the highest auditor in the land, Tsakani Maluleke. “We have seen over the last 5 years improvement in audit outcomes right across the system. Whether you’re talking dept or entities or legislatures, even TVETs, have seen improvement over 5 years. What it tells us is – attention to these critical things has been much much improved over the last 5 years.”

Concerns over key departments

But the biggest, more impactful departments are lagging behind on this improvement. The ones with the most critical impact on service delivery, like Health Services, Education, Human Settlements, Energy, Transport, and Safety among others, have shown the least improvement when it comes to audit outcome improvements.

Maluleke explains. “These high-impact auditees amount to 77% of the R2 trillion exp budget. So these are big ticket items, from a service delivery perspective but also the budget they look after. A cursory glance will show you the high-impact auditees lag behind the improvement trend that we have seen.”

The AG also brought to the attention of MPs, the risks to good audit outcomes identified by her office.
These are weaknesses in procurement and contract management, infrastructure delivery and maintenance, IT functions of government, quality of spend and overspending, and lack of accountability and consequence management.

Maluleke explains why the quality of spend and overspending is a risk. “We are raising the attention of parliament to these basic, fundamental practices, that need to be strengthened, especially as we are in low econ growth and pressure on fiscus. Some of the examples are in the water and energy sectors,  R75 million to train learners. That training didn’t happen, yet payment was made.”

Maluleke adds that her office has started implementing the legislation that gives her office more teeth.
Since 2019 the office has managed to recover more than R3 billion.