By Binta Jaiteh
Authorities of The Gambia Printing Publishing Cooperation (GPPC) have told lawmakers that the Institution’s 2019 financial report is still with the nation’s auditors.
Momodou Ceesay, Managing Director of GPPC informed the committee that this was due to the changed of the auditors.
“We want to inform the committee that the financial statement of year 2019 of GPPA is not yet finalized, it is still with the auditors the account is not fully ready. The reasons involved various issues which include changed of auditors and we have to recruit new auditors for business,” he said.
Honorable Halifa Sallah chairman of the committee said: “there is a constitutional mandate, section (175) of the constitution sub section (4) which makes it mandatory to establish a committee to monitor the activities of public enterprise with the view to make them accountable to the National Assembly. In doing so the committee is charged with the responsibility of promoting effective, efficiency and transparency of all the undertaking of public enterprises to carry out its responsibility. And sub section (5) makes it mandatory for public enterprise to submit annual report to the National Assembly on their business operation for the preceding year within three months of the end of financial year.”
“In essence then all public enterprise before 31st march of each year should submit report on their operation and business on the preceding year,” he said.
The lawmaker added: “when we commence work 2017, this committee under the new legislature experience backlog on activity report and financial statement, we took note of section (160) sub section (1c) of the constitution which requires the Auditor General to include the accounts of the public enterprises in the submission of annual audit report of the Auditor General. We therefore made it a primary objective to put an end to back log, so that all statement will reflect the year that is due not history, it was on that basis that we started engaging public enterprises to put an end to this backlog.”
