Public act needs updating, says Kui

THE country’s Public Finance and Management Act should be reviewed and aligned with international financial reporting standards (IFRS), says Kombra Kui.

Only then will the financial mismanagement in the public service and administration be contained.

Kui is an alternate member in the Papua New Guinea accountants registration board and a former lecturer in accounting at the University of Technology.

Kui said the process under the act was burdensome and lacked transparency unless it was aligned with IFRS, which would then guarantee a “framework for sound financial management reporting which was transparent and complemented auditing with faults easier to detect”.

His call was in response to the recent call from the education department calloing for financial statements from schools after many of them failed to submit their reports.

Kui claimed there was gross negligence involved in the current practice where schools used a standard format accounts book and cash book to produce their financial reports.

“I don’t want the school teachers to be blamed for failing to provide financial reports. It is the system’s fault. You can’t blame them, you blame the system which you have given them,” he said.