By Kumba Leigh
National Assembly Member (NAM) for Upper Saloum, Honourable Alagie Mbowe who doubles as the Chairperson of the Finance and Public Affairs Committee (FPAC) revealed that undisclosed contingent liabilities discovered in 2016 remains unresolved at the time of finalizing the Management Letter for 2016.
According to Honourable Mbowe, the project accounts are opened through Accountant General’s Department (AGD) and the project implementation units are the sole signatories.
AGD has never been part of project negotiations, adding that they only have access to the already signed financing agreements as AGD is mandated by law to be responsible for revenue collection from all sources. Unfortunately, payments for the security-point and scanning fees are collected by third parties.
He went on to explain that, litigation against the government involved third-party information which could only be obtained from the Ministry of Justice.
The figures for 2019 were disclosed to the extent possible. He added that the figures for 2020 have been requested but are yet to be released. On the audited accounts for all the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), he explained they were not available at the time of the audit exercise.
NAM Mbowe disclosed that the difference in closing and opening balance of loans was a debt management data issue. Since IFMIS does not capture the outstanding balances from the interface only debt servicing information is available from the interface.
Furthermore, Financing Agreements of projects usually dictate designated accounts and reporting requirements. Some donors have stringent human resource and software requirements. They also require a specific Public Finance Management (PFM) capacity in terms of Coordinators and Accountants.
He highlighted that creating Project Coordinating Units (PCU) in all places is a waste of resources and suggested Chartered Accountants at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs (MoFEA) can oversee project accounts like that of the Chartered Accountant that currently heads the accounts at the Ministry of Environment.
In conclusion, Mbowe argued that FPAC is concerned about the persistent adverse audit opinion over the years because of the materiality of the miss-statements involved, especially when no plausible explanations have been advanced by AGD or efforts made to reverse this unfavourable trend.
It should be noted that the finance ministry signed some of these financing agreements. The undisclosed contingent liabilities discovered in 2016 remained unresolved at the time of finalizing the Management Letter for 2016, but the Accountant General’s Department (AGD) however commits itself to work within a reasonable timeframe to resolve the issues. They assured FPAC that these outstanding issues have been analyzed and will be cleared in the 2019 accounts and AGD is a signatory to only central government accounts.
