Auditors brought under oversight authority

Botswana Accountancy Oversight Authority ( BAOA) moves to bring all Auditors under the Authority by April 1st. This is to ensure accountability and transparency in the firms and reduce professional misconduct activities.

Officially launching the Crowe Goel & Associate partnership on Tuesday, BAOA Chief Executive Officer, Duncan Majinda said auditors must be monitored extensively to promote quality and credibility of providing financial and non- financial information by entities. “Auditors are very dangerous if you don’t keep them on track because they know all the tricks. By April 1st, all auditors will be under BAOA. This means that they can be charged with professional misconduct.” BAOA was established in 2014 to provide oversight to the accounting and auditing profession. Its functions include standard setting, financial reporting, audit practice reviews, corporate governance reviews and enforcement of compliance and oversight over the education and training of professional accountants in Botswana. Majinda highlighted that in 2021, only six percent of Public Interest Entities ( PIEs) were compliant with the corporate governance. “This is not good at all. This is just the evaluation of CEOs and board members. In this evaluation we were only looking at the constitution of the board and we found out that some are occupied by non- independent executive members.” He said the Authority is going to have the code of corporate governance for auditors which will be the guiding tool for regulation and monitoring. Majinda highlighted that the BAOA ensures that Public Interest Entities ( PIEs) comply with good corporate governance principles and that their financial reporting and auditing is in accordance with international standards. The Authority also oversees BICA and professional accountancy bodies with local branches in Botswana, such as ACCA, CIMA, amongst others and will also register and monitor auditors of PIEs.

This will significantly enhance accountability and transparency in the accountancy profession. The public accounting, consulting and technology firm, Crowe launched partnership with a chartered accountants firm, Goel and Associates. Through the partnership, the two institutions will ensure good professional practices and accountability. Crowe Board Chairman, Pelonomi Namogang said the company is committed to give training opportunity for BICA students. “I would like to take this opportunity to encourage all accounting bodies to do more and absorb these students, especially Batswana students because in most institutions there are few Batswana but more foreign nationals.”