By Binta Jaiteh
Speaking during the consideration stage of Government 2019 Accounts on the queries made by auditors with the team of the Accountant General’s Department by the National Assembly Committee on Finance and Public Accounts Committee, Ebrahima M Drammeh said their position remains the same that after the time of providing this response, there was no evidence provided during the process.
Agnes Macaulay, Accountant General responded that they have compiled all the issues relating to GRA and they have them on item number 7 all the issues relating to GRA have the same comment because in that correspondence they said they are submitting all issues relating to them.
She added that the point that says issuing of receipt without recipient signature, their action point was to give evidence of the engagement that they have done with GRA in getting a response from them.
“The document that we provided was for them to give a response to all the audit issues so in our response today we using that to say in all the issues affected.
“Initially when the updated ML comes we will still say yes this was your initial response but then the auditors do not agree with what you are saying so if you have any further evidence to support your claim this is the time to bring it out,” he explained.
She continued: “Even after that, when the audit is concluded it will come to FPAC and we will be asked to go back to resolve the issues but we will still engage to say this now at the level of FPAC and you are required to do a BMC as it is captured there so the expectation is, if you still want to maintain your original submission then we would say this is what I have,” The statuesque remains,” she clarified.
The Accountant General further noted that, about differences in cash balances further work was carried out on this and they had a session to review it.
“It is concluded that the overstatement was a result of the way cash allocations were posted to the system. So our position is that we are working with the Auditor General to perhaps write up the difference which does not represent cash substance that is our latest update on this between the cash balance we will be working to get this in the 2021 Financial Statement.”
