Irregular spending by national and provincial governments is continuing to rise‚ albeit marginally at one percent‚ from R45.3-billion in March 2017 to R45.5-billion in March this year.
This is according to a report presented to a joint meeting of the standing committees on public accounts and appropriation on Wednesday by Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu‚ in which he detailed the audit outcomes of more than 434 government entities for the 2017/2018 financial year.
Makwetu reported that the number of government departments and entities that received clean audit outcomes (those who accounted properly for public funds) had declined during the period under review and had been doing so in the last four years.
The A-G told MPs that of the 295 departments and entities that received unqualified audits‚ only 99 (or 25%) obtained such audits with no findings at all while 196 were unqualified audits with findings.
“The current year‚ in terms of clean audits‚ has shown an all-time low in terms of that we have only 99 from 129 departments that head clean audits‚ so the level of clean audits has unfortunately regressed‚” said Makwetu.