Municipalities spent R1.4bn on 'worse' audit outcomes - AG
The Auditor-General says the country's municipalities spent R1.47 billion on consultants to assist with their financial reporting.
On Wednesday, Tsakani Maluleke briefed the National Council of Provinces on the general report on the local government audit outcomes for the 2023/24 financial year.
Only 41 of the country’s 257 municipalities obtained clean audits, while the City of Cape Town was the only metro that received a clean audit.
"Municipalities continued with the practice of spending significant financial resources on hiring consultants to assist them with preparing financial statements for audit,” Maluleke said.
"In 2023-2024, 219 municipalities spent a combined R1.47 billion on financial reporting consultants, with 130 of these municipalities still submitting financial statements that had errors in the areas where consultants did work, indicating that the spend was not effective.
"We included a similar message on the ineffective use of financial reporting consultants in our 2013-14 general report – little has changed in the decade since then,” she added.
The Auditor-General told MPs that 13 municipalities did not submit their financial statements for auditing by the legislated date.
"Seven of these municipalities, five of which are in the Free State, habitually disregard the legislated requirement and submit their financial statements late every year – or do not submit them at all."
In 2023-24, these seven municipalities managed a combined budget of R6.85 billion.
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