The Weekend Reader – 18 June

The much-awaited 2019 Auditor General’s Report was tabled inParliament this Wednesday, 16th of June 2021. Major issues raised in the report include;

Unauthorised Excess Expenditure

As previously reported in the prior years, Treasury continued to incur unauthorised excess expenditure on the budget. In 2019 excess expenditure of $6 806 340 654 which arose from Unallocated Reserve transfers made to line Ministries amounting to $7 386 995 654 that exceeded the approved budget of $580 655 000 in contravention of Section 305 (5) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 20) Act, 2013. The failure by Treasury to adhere to legal provisions on the sanctioning of excess expenditure by Parliament substantiates the lack of political will to deal with challenges of poor corporate governance.

Diversion of Resources

The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education bought a pool vehicle, registration number AFG 1799, for $1 775 000 and fuel worth $240 380 on December 24, 2019, using funds meant for Zimbabwe Council for Higher Education (ZIMCHE), $1 775 000 and Manicaland State University of Applied Sciences and Harare Institute of Technology, $240 380. This deprived the implementation of programmes under the respective institutions.

Financial Irregularities

Payment vouchers with expenditure amounting to $2 093 988 were processed and paid without authority. They were not signed in the spaces provided for passed for “payment or certified correct”. Inadequate supervision contributed to the anomaly. Treasury Instruction 0669 states that ‘the Director of Finance, before passing a voucher for payment, must be satisfied that it has been subjected to scrutiny by an examining officer to ensure that it is in order in accordance with Instruction 0655, that the payee is the person entitled to payment, that the invoice has not been previously paid and that it is properly classified’.

Read the full publication here (157KB PDF)

You can access the 2019 Auditor General’s report here (3MB PDF)

Source: ZIMCODD