Public bodies fail to submit financial statements, TIPNG says

THE majority of public bodies have failed to submit annual financial statements as required under the Public Finance Management Amended Act (PFMAA) 2016, according to Transparency International PNG (TIPNG).
It made the claim in a statement yesterday following its recent publication titled: “TIPNG accountability scorecard.”
TIPNG urged members of parliament and the Department of Finance to support the Auditor General’s Office in making a commitment to ensuring public audit reports were submitted and tabled in Parliament.
TIPNG said its accountability scorecard used the last available report from the Auditor General’s Office to show which public bodies and statutory authorities had been accountable.
TIPNG said only seven of these agencies had demonstrated some level of accountability since 2016, the rest of the 65 agencies had failed to report how they had spent billions of public funds provided to them via the budgetary process.
Transparency International PNG said this trend reflected a serious breakdown in financial management and represented a direct violation of the PFMAA 2016, Section 63 provision on Reports and Financial Statements.
“The Minister of Finance and the Auditor General’s Office through recent announcements on the Apec Audit Report and the Covid-19 audit report, have articulated a greater appetite for more accountability in the use of public funds,” it said.
“While such efforts should be commended, the people of Papua New Guinea expect more from our Government and Parliament in particular, as the ultimate mechanism responsible for oversight of how public funds are spent,” said TIPNG chairman Peter Aitsi in a media statement.