East African Business Week

KIGALI, RWANDA -  The Rwandan government continues to lose a sizeable share of taxpayers' and donor money in state agencies that continue to fail to curb wasteful and unsupported expenses, a state finances  audit report says.
This awful misconduct continues to uncover despite immense praise by donors hailing Rwanda's efficient public financial management and the fight against corruption.
Similarly, the report comes at a time when the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which critically assesses Rwanda's economic policy in the medium term, urges the country to increase revenue collections in order to meet huge financing needs for development.
In his report covering 18 months during 2009/2010 fiscal year, Auditor General of state finances Mr. Obadiah Biraro noted that the government continues to register 'wasteful and unsupported expenditure'.
However, Mr. Biraro noted that although some state agencies continue to abuse public finances, there is a general improvement in handling state incomes and expenditure.
In the report, which he presented to the Parliament recently, Biraro noted that more than Rf1billion (over US$2m) was unearthed as 'wasteful expenditure' during the audit period.
Surprisingly, more than half of this money was spent in paying fines such as delayed remittance of social security contributions of civil servants.
The report further says that the government incurred unsupported expenditure in which billions of Rwandan Francs were paid.
The report cites examples of unsupported expenditures in cases where state agencies incurred an expense but failed to prove it with complete documents like purchase order.
The report notes that the audits identified that 47% of the weaknesses that were noted during the previous audits persisted and had not been addressed by the time of the 2009/10 audits.
"This shows laxity or inability of Chief Budget managers in implementing audit recommendations," notes the report.
The AG report indicates that numerous errors in the accounting records continue to exist in most of the public entities.
The report was released following formation of a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in the parliament to deal with government expenditure.
The committee, which has been tasked to analyse the report is believed to be the last hope for Rwanda to ensure safety of public finances.
PAC adds onto other state watchdogs like the Ombudsman, the Police, and the Judiciary in the fight against irregularities in state business especially in public financial management.
Rwanda has been lauded regionally and indeed worldwide as one that adheres to good governance standards with low levels of corruption but the report provides areas where investigations for graft cases are urgently needed.
These areas include tendering processes that never followed the set oversight standards and regulations that have been put in place.