Department disputes audit reports
• Western Cape agriculture department disagrees with auditor-general’s qualified audit opinion
The DA-led Western Cape government has taken the auditor-general to court to fight the one qualified audit opinion the provincial government received for the 2017/18 financial year.
The DA-led Western Cape government has taken the auditor-general to court to fight the one qualified audit opinion the provincial government received for the 2017/18 financial year.
The provincial government’s department of agriculture has disagreed with the auditorgeneral Kimi Makwetu’s interpretation of its financial statements and has filed papers in the high court to review and set aside the disputed findings.
The province boasted in October that an analysis of the audit outcomes for 2017/18 indicated that 23 out of 24 audits
— which included all the Western Cape departments, the provincial legislatures and entities — received unqualified audits on their statements.
However, only six months before the national elections, the ANC-led Gauteng provincial government has already boasted that it is the only province in which all its departments received unqualified audit opinions for 2017/18, after being briefed by Makwetu on the state of affairs.
The auditor-general will table the outcomes of the provincial and national audit results on November 21.
Bianca Capazorio, the spokesperson for newly appointed economic opportunities MEC Beverley Schäfer, said on Monday the Western Cape department of agriculture was challenging the outcomes of both its 2016/17 and 2017/18 audit reports.
She said the department had received “consecutive clean audits for a number of years and prides itself on its high level of fiscal responsibility and accountability” but that the current matter dealt with a difference in technical interpretations between the department and the auditor-general’s office about the classification of certain payments made to entities involved in farmer settlement and disaster-relief projects.
Capazorio said the department and the auditor-general’s office had been engaging on the matter but were unable to find common ground, which led to the department turning to the courts. She said they had approached the Cape Town high court for relief on the matter, which related to how payments were made and classified with regards to contracts between the department and some institutions. Capazorio said the payments were classified as transfers in the department’s financial statements, which has historically not led to any adverse audit findings.
She said there was, however, a recent change in the auditorgeneral’s approach and interpretation of the relevant standards, which had resulted in adverse findings in the audit.
Makwetu’s spokesperson Africa Boso said that the auditorgeneral would only deal with matters relating to the audits on the day the general report on the audit outcomes of the national and provincial accounts are tabled.