Cebu City gets positive audit rating

Except for seven items, the Cebu City government got a passing rate from the Commission on Audit for its financial transactions last year.

COA-7 director Eden Rafanan said the audit was done in accordance with the Philippine Public Standards on Auditing.

“We expressed a qualified opinion on the fairness of the presentation of the financial statements of the city for the year 2017 in view of the following exceptions noted that need immediate action,” reads a portion of the letter addressed to Mayor Tomas Osmeña.

Councilor Margarita “Margot” Osmeña said qualified opinion means that there are points that did not pass the audit of COA.

Margot, chairperson of the council committee on budget and finance, said the ratings that the city got from COA is a marked improvement from the adverse opinion in the past years.

“We are working towards an ‘unqualified' opinion for this year,” she told The FREEMAN.

Margot said this has been the second year that the city government did not get adverse opinion from COA. She is hoping that the city will continuously get positive remarks from the audit team in the coming years.

The items that did not pass the COA for city's transactions last year include the P421 million inaccurate balances of the inventory accounts; P10.3 billion unreliable balances of property, plant, and equipment; doubtful on the validity of the land account amounting to P753,300; P3.1 million unliquidated cash advances granted to officials under the Special Education Fund and Trust Fund; uncertainty in the validity of the P21.6 million account under the temporary SL of some special account balances as of December 2017; unreliable balance of P42 million due from officers and employees due to negative balances noted in its SL; and inaccurate balance of accounts receivable amounting to P2.7 million.

Rafanan recommended that the city government should undertake the remedial measures on the items that failed in audit.

She said the COA's team and some staff of the city government discussed the courses of action to take to address the problems of the transactions last year.

She added that the city should submit the duly accomplished agency action plan and status of implementation within 60 days from June 29 when the city received the report.