More auditors for AG’s office, regular audits needed – Gaskin

… to prevent misuse of finances in Govt

The office of the Auditor General could benefit from additional staff, including more auditors to carry out more expanded audits and a change in policy that would see more regular audits being carried out. With this in place and a strengthened office, special forensic audits costing taxpayers millions would be a thing of the past.
This is according to economist and former Presidential Advisor, Ramon Gaskin, who spoke of the shortcomings being highlighted by the AG’s office, after the fact. He said by the time auditors have uncovered breaches of the law and procedure related to expenditure, the trail has already gone cold.
“The Auditor General’s office needs many more auditors,” Gaskin said. “They are understaffed. They need many more auditors and to locate them inside the agencies and inside the Ministries (as a preventative mechanism).”
“Not to come a year later and to say this happened. They ought to be there to do (regular audits). They need more professionally trained accountants and auditors in the office. By the time they check the books the money (already gone).”
Gaskin also noted that with an Audit Office functioning at its best, there would be no need for forensic auditors. Since coming to office, the Government had ordered a number of forensic audits into State agencies. These audits were given to a number of private firms.
Over $130 million of taxpayers’ money were spent on these audits, which were launched into agencies such as Guyana Office for Investment (Go-Invest), the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA), the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) and Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA).
Other entities had included the Scrap Metal Unit, the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary-Agriculture Development Association (MMA-ADA), Guyana Power and Light and the Guyana Oil Company (Guyoil).
After all this expenditure, however, Finance Minister Winston Jordan revealed that some of the audits which started with specific Terms of References (ToR) fell far short of the Government’s expectations from a forensic audit.

He made this announcement at the 35th annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean (ICAC).
In light of this, Gaskin emphasised the need to strengthen the Auditor General’s office. He noted that the Auditor General, who is the constitutional office holder tasked to audit the books of Guyana, is ordinarily the person for the job.
“You don’t need other people to go in there. The Constitution gives him and his office the exclusive authority to audit the books of Guyana. So this whole idea of having an Auditor General and have all these other people come in later doesn’t happen in other countries.”

The Govt slash
But strengthening the audit office is exactly what the agency had in mind when it put in its request for finances to be allocated in the 2017 Budget. The proposed estimate for the office was $771.2 million, but Government revised this sum to $754.9 million.
The proposed budget was slashed by Government representatives in the National Assembly during consideration of the 2017 Estimates of Expenditure, and the resultant consequences have since included the AOG grappling with not having adequate staff, or adequate funds to pay them.
In an interview earlier this year, Auditor General Deodat Sharma had revealed that the AOG had been affected by the cut, being forced to relinquish plans to hire additional staff.
“It (the budgetary cut) affected us because we were unable to bring on the rest of the staff that we needed, especially when carrying out our extended mandate,” the Auditor General related in the interview.
The People’s Progressive Party has been vocal in its opposition to the budgetary cut. The party pointed out that the total budgetary allocation for constitutional agencies in 2016 was $8 billion, whereas it is only $6 billion in 2017.