Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu’s key points of ‘disappointing’ audit outcomes 

Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu revealed on Wednesday the “disappointing” audit results for national and provincial governments for the 2018/2019 financial year.

Here are some of his key findings:

Overall, the audit outcomes have regressed since 2014/2015 with only 80 auditees improving and 91 regressing. Only 100 (26%) of the auditees managed to produce quality financial statements and performance reports and to comply with key legislation, thereby receiving a clean audit.

In 2014/2015, 106 auditees had clean audits.

There were serious weaknesses in the financial management of national and provincial governments that had not been addressed over the past five years.

The financial health of auditees continued to deteriorate – with departments in particular struggling to balance their finances.

Unauthorised expenditure remained high at R1.365 billion.

There was an emerging risk of increased litigation and claims against departments. Over a third of the departments had claims against them above 10% of their next year’s budget.

A deficit of R62.06 billion was incurred by the 31% of public entities whose expenditure exceeded their revenue – 90% of the deficit related to the Road Accident Fund.

Fruitless and wasteful expenditure continued to rise, with 223 auditees losing R849 million in the current year. Over the five years, R4.16 billion of government expenditure was fruitless and wasteful.

Irregular expenditure increased to R62.60 billion from the R51 billion reported last year.

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