Enforcing Public Accounts Committee’s Recommendations

SADCOPAC/EAAPAC Joint Accountability Conference 6th – 8th May 2013

Speke Hotel, Kampala - Uganda

Presented by : Hon. John M. Cheyo, MP. PAC, Tanzania

The genesis of PAC Recommendations

For each financial year, each public authority or body is required by the Section 30 of the Public Audit Act (2008) to prepare and submit for audit its financial statements to the CAG.

After examining and auditing the financial statements, CAG is required by the Section 34 of the Public Audit Act (2008) to submit the Report of his findings to Parliament within 9 months after the close of the financial year (Every year in April) .

The genesis of PAC Recommendations

Once the reports are tabled in the House, they are referred to PAC.

PAC is mandated by the Addendum 8 (12) of the Standing Order No. 115 to examine these reports through conducting hearings and site visits.

Accounting Officers and other government officials are then summoned by the Committee to answer to audit queries relating to expenditures in their respective ministries. Such hearings are open to the public and the media.

The genesis of PAC Recommendations

Thereafter, the Committee develops its recommendations and tables its report in Parliament for debate and adoption.

In that regard, PAC gives two types of recommendations namely;

i. Specific recommendations that are given direct to the Accounting Officers during PAC hearings.

ii.General recommendations that are submitted along with the PAC report to Parliament for debate and adoption.

Specific recommendations given at PAC level

• These recommendations are given as directives to the Accounting Officers during the PAC meetings.

• The Accounting Officers report back on the implementation of the recommendations during the next PAC meeting.

• However, their implementation reports has to be verified by CAG before being submitted to PAC for consideration.

• Of recent years, the level of responding to the specific recommendations by the Accounting Officers has been quite satisfactory.

General recommendations tabled in Parliament

•Once PAC finalizes consideration of the report submitted by the CAG, it compiles a report containing its recommendations,

•The report and recommendations are then submitted to the Parliament for its consideration and adoption.

•Once the recommendations are adopted by the Parliament, they are referred to the Executive for implementation.

General recommendations tabled in Parliament

• Before the next Parliament session, the Accounting Officers are obligated by the law to respond to the PAC/Parliament recommendations and prepare action plan of the intended remedial actions for submission to the Paymaster-General.

• On receipt of the responses and action plans, the Paymaster-General submits to the Finance Minister to lay it before the Parliament in the next session .

• After the submission of the Executive responses to PAC/Parliament recommendations, PAC requests the CAG to verify the Executive responses and action plans and report back to PAC on his findings.

General recommendations tabled in Parliament

•Then, PAC sets up a meet with the CAG and PMG to discuss and consider the Executive responses and action plans.

•For the recommendations that are partially or not implemented by the Executive, PAC reports back to Parliament for further consideration.

Challenges•Lack of political will to conclusively

implement Committee recommendations, particularly those that entail intense investigations and prosecution. Hence, Executive takes unnecessarily too long to implement PAC recommendations.

•PAC deals with post-mortem scrutiny of government expenditure. This does not help much in terms of prevention of possible misappropriation of funds by public officers entrusted with their custody.

Challenges

• The Executive takes too long to implement PAC recommendations that remedial actions requires changing a policy or amending a law. For instance, PAC recommendation to the Ministry of Industries and Trade and Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) on opting for post-shipment inspection of imported vehicles and other goods for safety, security and economic reasons has not yet been implemented. However, statistics show by opting for pre-shipment inspection of imported vehicles, the Government has lost a sum of US$ 14,103,302 from 2002 - 2011 as externalised foreign currency.

Challenges•Lack of a proper Parliamentary mechanism

of using PAC recommendations as a budgetary tool and as an important inputs or key information to Portfolio Committees during policy and budget scrutiny at the Parliamentary Committee level.

Way forward • Exposing Accounting Officers who fail to account for

public funds. PAC decided to use its Committee hearings not only to get evidence, but also to publicly expose Accounting Officers whose stewardship of public funds was questioned by the CAG. To make this possible, PAC allows the media to attend its hearings. This approach enables the public to follow PAC proceedings and expose the aforementioned to the public for the later to demand Government action.

• Directing the Accounting Officers to make some instant corrections on the issues that PAC feels they need immediate solutions/actions. In that case, PAC will report to the Parliament the directive it made and the action taken.

Way forward • Lobbying the Sector Committees to adopt the

recommendations of PAC and use them during their policy scrutiny and budget monitoring work.

• Linking the audit findings and PAC recommendations with budget approval. In other words, before the MDAs, Public Enterprises and other Government bodies are allocated more resources, they should first be required to demonstrate how they implemented the previous audit and PAC recommendations.

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