Linda Ensor
20 August 2008
Cape Town — There had been some improvement in the financial management of municipalities but progress was slow and there was still a long way to go, accountant general Freeman Nomvalo said yesterday.
He gave a summary of the findings of auditor-general reports on the financial statements of municipalities to the National Council of Provinces' select committee on finance.
He urged the treasury, the provincial and local government department and provinces to ensure they had the capacity to support municipalities with their financial management.
Nomvalo praised the mutual help and sharing of information which had developed between Western Cape municipalities.
Commenting on the improvements in audit outcomes for the 2007-08 fiscal year, Nomvalo said that the combination of adverse opinions and disclaimers had fallen from 143 in the 2006-07 year to 126 in 2007-08 among the 253 municipalities analysed.
Disclaimers had fallen from 118 to 104 and adverse opinions from 25 to 22. These are the worst possible findings on the state of financial management of an institution, a disclaimer meaning there was no information on which to base an audit opinion.
With regard to audit qualifications, the movement was in the wrong direction from 64 last year to 71 in 2007-08, although Nomvalo noted that some municipalities that received disclaimers or adverse opinions previously might have improved and moved up into the qualification category.
Unqualified audit opinions with emphasis of matter had improved from 44 to 53, whereas this year there were only three clean reports, up from two last year.
In KwaZulu-Natal, 14% of all finalised audit reports for 2007-08 were disclaimers or adverse opinions, with 24% in Eastern Cape and 21% in Northern Cape.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
