The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, John Rwangombwa, has said that internal auditors in public institutions still lack the independence to make objective decisions, something that is a setback to monitoring public finances.

According to the Minister, this lack of confidence is driven by the limited capacity of auditors and public accountants.
"This is an area that we are really focusing on as we train them (auditors),” Rwangombwa said.

He added that government, through Chief Internal Auditor’s department across the country, has identified issues that need to be addressed.

"We know we have challenges…but we are working on them,” he said, adding that government has introduced audit committees that will help in strengthening the internal audit function in public institutions.

Citing the current Internal Auditors’ Report, the Minister said that there are still challenges in performance, guarding and proper management of public finances.

In order to improve Public Finance Management (PFM) government is set to deploy an integrated financial management system (Smartgov) to all budget agencies that it has been building for the last five years.

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