Massive improvement in financial reporting

THE 2021/22 audit report of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) has indicated that institutions have increasingly improved performance in financial reporting.

The CAG yesterday stated that 96.64 per cent of the audited institutions got unqualified opinions.

This type of audit opinion indicates that the auditors are satisfied with the company’s financial reporting.

Controller and Auditor General Charles Kichere at the State House in Dar es Salaam said that his office audited a total of 1045 institutions in 2021/22, out of which it issued unqualified opinions to1010 institutions, equivalent to 96.64 per cent.

Mr Kichere elaborated that out of the total institutions, 218 are under the Prime Minister’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Governments), out of them, 204 got unqualified opinions while the remaining 13 got qualified opinions and one received adverse opinion.

Also, out of the audited 203 public organisations, 196 were issued with unqualified opinions, the remaining got qualified (5) and others received disclaimer of opinions.

A total of 315 central government entities, 19 political parties and 290 development projects have also been audited.

The report indicates that in the Central Government, 309 had unqualified opinions, while those with adverse opinions were three and the other three had qualified opinions.

The CAG also audited 19 political parties, whereby 12 of them scooped unqualified opinions, adverse opinions (5), qualified opinion (1) and disclaimer of opinion (1).

The report, which was handed over to President Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan, further showed that the CAG issued 29 qualified opinions, equivalent to 2.78 per cent.

The CAG also audited 290 development projects, with Mr Kichere pointing out that 287 of them had unqualified opinion, adverse opinion (3) and none got qualified opinion.

Highlighting on the implementation of previous CAG recommendations, he said of the total 21831 recommendations, 8442, which is about 39 per cent, were fully implemented.

Other 6971 recommendations (32 per cent) are still under implementation while the remaining 2936 recommendations (13 per cent) are not yet implemented.

He further noted that 2643 recommendations were repeated while other 39 suggestions were outdated.

“There is need to improve supervision in implementation of these recommendations in order to attain more achievements in carrying out the projects,” Mr Kicheere said.

Commenting on the achievement, President Samia said improvements have been seen in the performance of the institutions as compared to previous reports.

However, President Samia stated that implementation of the CAG recommendations was still poor since only 39 per cent of suggestions were implemented.

She directed ministers and permanent secretaries to ensure that they implement the CAG recommendations and give feedback to the CAG over unimplementable recommendations.