By Binta Jaiteh
The National Assembly public enterprise committee has reprimanded Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS) for failing to submit its financial statement of the year ended 31st December 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively on time.
Speaking at the session, MP for Lower Badibou, Alhagie Jawara, said: “institutions cannot depend on individuals. The submission of financial statements and management letter are statutory requirement by the National Assembly.”
To his surprise, he said Institution cannot depend on individual information is already there, he therefore urged the members to make a strong decision regarding this.
Nyakassi M.B Sanyang, statistician general at GBOS, said there are issues pertaining to the report of financial statement.
He said they were present in 2018 and advised to change cash bases to approval bases which start from 2016, and “we need time to provide information that will compare with 2016 and 2017, we had changed in number of accounts. The accountant retired and a new accountant came and spent three months with us and left.”
“It took us some time to recruit another one due to inexperienced of the job, all assets should be valid we had to write to the Ministry of Works for support, because of the frequent changes and act on time for the submission of financial statement to the national audit office. We had to result to hiring of financial consultant who provided support,” he explained
He added that as the present moment he was talking, the three financial statements have been submitted to the auditors. According to him, 2018 was submitted early November 2019 was taken last week,” he added.
Musa Jallow from National Audit Office said GBoS has submitted 2017, 2018, 2019 reports in November and last week respectively.
Halifa Sallah, GBOS is required to submit an activity report and financial statement to the assembly on an annual bases saying “GBOS appears to be an institution that is indispensable to any planning or decision making in the administration of the country, this establishes by an act that aims to provide for a sustainable effective, and efficient statistical national system.”