51 parastatals fail to submit financials

Wallace Ruzvidzo

Herald Reporter

FIFTY-ONE State enterprises failed to submit their financial statements for auditing to the Auditor-General as required.

In her 2022 audit report, Acting Auditor-General, Mrs Rhea Kujinga, highlighted key audit findings as well as her recommendations on how issues raised may be addressed to improve public sector transparency, accountability, good corporate governance and service delivery.

The report covers the audit results from the financial statements of State-owned enterprises and parastatals, including the statement of financial position, the statement of financial performance, statement of changes in equity, statement of cash flows and notes to the financial statements.

In her report, Mrs Kujinga said of the 51 entities that had not submitted their financials, 24 of them had also not submitted those for 2021 while three entities had arrears spanning over five years.

However, she said, although Covid-19 had adverse implications on accountability and transparency, some entities were now up-to-date with their financial reporting.

“There were 51 entities that had not yet submitted financial statements for audit.

“At the time of producing this report, in relation to the 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 financial years, one hundred and forty-nine (149) audits had been completed and one hundred and five (105) were in progress while some were being finalised”.

Notably, Mrs Kujinga said the automation of revenue collection systems by State-owned entities had increased efficiency but asset management issues needed to be addressed.

“Automation of many revenue collection systems by some SOEs has resulted in reduction of human errors in accounting for revenue. However, revenue collection and debt recovery issues raised emanated from unclassified deposits that are a result of insufficient customer details and absence of debtors’ reconciliations due to inadequate accounting staff,” she said.

“There was an increase of asset management issues noted in this report as compared to those raised in my 2021 annual report. I have reported 25 issues compared to four issues that were raised in 2021. The issues relate mainly to institutions lagging behind in maintenance of buildings and non-replacement of aged fleet. These issues may affect service delivery in some entities if not addressed.”

On procurement of goods and services, Mrs Kujinga said the enactment of relevant legislation had improved transparency, although some issues relating to non-delivery of goods had been noted.

“The enactment of the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act brought an improvement in ensuring transparency in procurement of goods and services by public entities as well as ensuring fair, honest, cost effective and competitive procurement and disposal of assets.

“However, 20 issues relating to procurement of goods and services were noted and most of the issues relates to non-delivery of goods paid for,” she said.

Mrs Kujinga said there had been progress noted in addressing prior year findings although many of them had still not been fully addressed.

“I raised 206 audit findings in my 2019-2021 annual reports that I followed up for the reported entities herein and noted that 92 were addressed, but 60 were partially addressed and 54 were not addressed,” she said.

The 51 entities that failed to submit financial statements are listed below with the years where the statements are missing.