Comprehensive auditing to be intensified in Ghana

Accra, Nov. 16, GNA - The Auditor-General's (AG's) Department and its overseas collaborators has initiated moves to make auditing in the public sector more comprehensive.

Mr. Yaw Sipa, Acting Assistant Auditor-General, told journalists at the opening of a four-day symposium for 40 representatives of selected public sector organisations that "auditing in the public sector largely focuses on financial side of things to the neglect of performance and risk management". He said the symposium was therefore to sensitize the boards of directors, managements and auditors of public sector accountability agencies about the need for regular performance auditing and performance reporting in addition to the financial auditing to ensure proper risk management in the public sector.

The symposium dubbed Governance, Accountability and Reporting Performance Auditing, is being facilitated by the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation (CCAF) with sponsorship from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

It is being attended by members of boards of directors, managements and auditors from the Controller and Accountant-General's Department, Ministry of Finance, CHRAJ, Ghana Police Service, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Judicial Service. The symposium is part of an international programme to strengthen institutions that support good governance and democratic development. Mr Sipa said performance auditing went beyond the figures to look at how a project was implemented and what were the risks to its success in order to inform subsequent executions of similar projects. He said performance auditing started in Ghana some eight years ago through the support of the CCAF. However, it is not yet mandatory for public sector agencies to do performance reporting even after auditing the projects they undertook.

Mr Sipa said since the introduction of performance auditing the A-G's Department had done 22 performance audits on projects in mainly the health and education sectors, particularly GETFund projects and training programmes.

"Nineteen (19) of our audit reports have been tabled before Parliament and five have been examined by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament," he said.

Mr. Sipa said even though performance auditing was young in Ghana, the country recently won an international award for its performance audit on police accommodation, saying that should encourage mandatory performance auditing and reporting.

Mr. Richard Quartey, Acting Auditor-General, said CCAF had helped to train at least four personnel from Ghana in the methodologies, techniques and practices of effective auditing, particularly performance auditing and reporting.

He said the symposium would afford participants the opportunity to examine key accountability concepts, theories and processes, explore how to focus on results and ensure sound stewardship of resources, learn how risk management fitted into the accountability process and provide a clear understanding of the role of performance reporting among other things. The facilitators are Mr. Yves Gautheir, Senior Vice President of Quebec-based Desjardins and Mr. Lee MacCormark, Director of Research of CCAF. 16 Nov. 09