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Cape Town - Only 26% of national departments received unqualified audit opinions with no findings in the 2015/16 financial year, the auditor general’s report on national and provincial government showed.
The office of the auditor general briefed Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) on Wednesday, saying that the audit outcomes of departments are slow to improve. The percentage of departments with clean audits declined from 29% in the previous financial year to 26%.
According to the report, 53% of departments received unqualified audits with findings, 17% received qualified audits with findings, 1% received adverse audit opinions with findings and 1% had disclaimed audit opinions with findings.
These results are the same as in the previous financial year, which showed no improvement. In addition, 2% of departments’ audits for the 2015/16 financial year were outstanding.
The number of clean audits at public entities improved slightly in the latest financial year – from 29% to 34%. The number of disclaimed audit opinions, however, have gone up by one percentage point to 7%, while the number of public entities with outstanding audits also increased from 2% (five) to 7% (23).
“State-owned entities’ operation and audit outcomes were affected by instability, ineffective leadership practices and poor monitoring and oversight,” the auditor general’s office said.
At a provincial level the departments of health, education and public works – which receive close to 37% of the budget – had the poorest audit outcomes of all the departments. Altogether 40% of provincial health, education and public works departments received qualified or disclaimed audit opinions, compared to 13% of other departments.
“The poor audit outcomes of these key sector departments require urgent attention to ensure accountability and service delivery,” the auditor general said in the report.
