the imbroglio surrounding the Auditor General and the public accounts for financial year 2023 enters yet another predictable and tedious week.
It has occurred to me (as I am certain that it has to many others) that when it comes to the nation’s accounts, the Auditor General is duty-bound to certify and deliver the most accurate version of those accounts to which she has access.
To put it another way, if up until the morning of the day that those accounts are required to be submitted to the Speaker of the House, the relevant public servants at the Ministry of Finance discover that there was an error in the previous submission, the question should never be that of the date of the statutory deadline but whether or not the correction is verifiable and acceptable.
A country requires accurate and incontrovertible data to be run in an efficient manner. It is unfortunate that an error was made (these things happen). But to penalise the nation as a consequence seems to me a bit puerile and vindictive.
Why aren’t more people upset over the fact that a lump sum of more $3 billion of our dollars is being asked to sit in a suspense account, only to be written back into the revenue column in next year’s accounts? We want our money now!
G Elias
Cascade
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