There are fears that public funds amounting to over Rwf5.6 billion were either wasted or swindled in the 2017-2018 fiscal year, the Auditor General informed Parliament yesterday.

While presenting his report to Parliament for the fiscal year ended on June 30, 2018, Obadiah Biraro said that his audits reached cross-cutting findings of irregular expenditure.

The irregular expenditures were in the form of unsupported expenditure, partially supported expenditure, wasteful expenditure, unauthorised expenditure and funds diverted or fraudulently utilised.

Members of Parliament during the presentation of the Auditor General’s report at the Parliamentary Buildings yesterday. Courtesy.

Though the AG warned that more efforts need to be made in the attainment of proper public funds management, he welcomed the improvements made.

The figures for irregular expenditures in the AG’s report for 2018 show that there has been a 68 per cent decline in irregular expenditure from Rwf17.6 billion in 2016 to Rwf5.68 billion in 2018, respectively.

"This is indicative of an improvement in our PFM (Public Financial Management) systems and controls when it comes to recording and accounting for expenditure,” the Auditor General said.

Conducted during the period from May 2018 to 20 April 2019, the previous fiscal year’s audits covered 173 public entities and projects.

They comprise 142 budget agencies like ministries or districts and special projects, five Government Business Enterprises and 26 District Hospitals.

The audits were made on expenditures representing 86.6 per cent of the national budget, which is a slightly bigger coverage in comparison to previous year’s audits that covered 86.4 per cent of budget.

The focus for the AG’s audits in 2018 was again on high risk entities and those that implement programmes that impact on the lives of Rwandan citizens.

An example of those entities are the three biggest Government Business Entreprises (GBEs) that include energy giant REG Holding (which comprises EUCL and EDCL), the pension body RSSB, and the water and sanitation group WASAC.

The audits also targeted nine government boards whose mandates impact citizens’ lives most, such as the Rwanda Agricultural Board (RAB) among others.

The AG noted that "generally, the current status of opinion results for GBEs and Boards presents a huge opportunity for improvement” as they are in charge of executing programmes of national importance.

"There is need for concerted efforts and attention to GBEs and Boards to ensure improvement of Public Financial Management aimed at improving service delivery to the citizens,” he said.

Apart from cases of irregular expenditure, the AG’s audits for the past fiscal year cited cases of delayed and abandoned contracts, stalled projects, continuing cases of idle assets, failure to recover advance payment and performance securities as well as non-compliance with taxation laws.

The AG also noted in his report that the trend on the status of implementation of his recommendations over the past five years shows that the rate is still low.

He said that the average rate of implementation stood at 49 per cent in 2018, representing a slight improvement of 5 per cent from the previous year 2017.

"There is need for concerted efforts to implement Auditor General’s recommendations by the audited entities to improve Public Financial Management (PFM),” the AG said in the report.

Most MPs agreed with him that special efforts were needed to ensure that public funds are not lost in wasteful spending or outright theft.

MP Christine Muhongayire called for investing in research to further understand the causes for continued irregularities in public financial management.

"Can we do research about the reasons behind these losses – is it lack of expertise or it is lack of diligence in what is being done? Is it just swindling? We need to conduct research to understand the cause for these things,” she said.

MP Theoneste Safari Begumisa agreed, calling for efforts to bring those responsible for poor management of public funds to account.

"Let’s use this report to ask those in charge what went wrong and bring them to account. We can also make sure that they are replaced in their jobs where necessary,” he said.

The report will be reviewed by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the feedback will be presented to Parliament for more consideration.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com