The Auditor-General’s report for 2017 has found that payments amounting to GHS66,387,161.08 were made outside the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).

Section 98(1)(b) of the PFM Act makes it an offence for a purchase order to be issued outside the GIFMIS or any other electronic platform in use by Government.

However, the A-G said in its report that: “We observed that some MDAs continued to process some of their transactions outside the GIFMIS”.

“Our review of the transactions of three sampled MDAs, namely Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) and the Ministry of Logal Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), showed transactions totaling GHS66,387,161.08 in their Sub-CF Accounts, which had no corresponding details on the GIFMIS platform”.

“We recommended that the CAG and the Ministry of Finance ensure strict compliance with the law”, the report said.

Also, the report noted that during the review of the vendor database in GIFMIS, “we noted that some of the vendor names were duplicated and assigned with different IDs. Similarly, we observed that different vendors were assigned with common bank account details, exposing the government to the risk of wrongful payments”.

“We recommended that CAGD should conduct a review of the entire database and purge the system of all anomalies”.

The Report of the Auditor-General on the Public Accounts of Ghana (Consolidated Fund) for the financial year ended 31 December 2017 was prepared under Section 11 of the Audit Service Act, 2000 for presentation to Parliament in accordance with Section 20 of the Act.

In accordance with Article 187(5) of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana and Section 23(1) of the Audit Service Act 2000 (Act, 584), the Auditor-General, Mr Daniel Domelevo, said in the report: “I have the honour to present my report on the Public Accounts of Ghana for the year ended 31 December 2017 to be laid before Parliament”.

The Controller and Accountant-General (CAG) is mandated under Section 81(1) of the Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921), to prepare and submit to the Minister and the Auditor-General, within three months after the end of the financial year, the following consolidated annual accounts of Government: the consolidated annual accounts of Government including the accounts specified in the Schedule; the accounts of the Contingency Fund; and the accounts of the Petroleum Funds.


Source: Ghana/ClassFMonline.com/91.3FM