Cape Town – Several ministers have asked Parliament to grant extensions to their departments and entities reporting to them after they failed to submit annual reports by the September 30 deadline.
This, after the Cape Times reported earlier this week that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan informed Parliament that Eskom, Denel and Alexkor were unable to submit their 2021-22 annual reports pending audited financial statements.
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has requested that the Government Printing Works (GPW) be exempted from submitting its 2021-22 annual report pending the finalisation of the audit of its finances.
This is the second year in a row the GPW is unable to submit within the stipulated period, after it suffered a crash on its data server last year and was unable to submit the 2020-21 annual report within the legislated deadline.
Motsoaledi said they had previously committed to submitting two sets of annual financial statements by May 2022.
“GPW partially achieved this objective and indeed submitted the first set of annual financial statements for the 2020-21 to the AGSA for auditing on 31 May 2022.
“However, GPW suffered yet another system crash in March 2022 at its Bosman campus which led to the collapse of the infrastructure that housed amongst others, the databases with financial information and supporting schedules for the GPW financials, that could have assisted with the compilation of the second set of the 2021-22 annual financial statements.”
“I need to request that GPW be granted an extension on the submission of the 2021/22 Annual Financial Statements as well as the Annual Report, pending finalisation of engagements with AGSA and National Treasury,” Motsoaledi said.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana also asked Parliament to grant the National Treasury an extension to table its 2021-22 annual report by 4 November 2022 because its financial statements are still not finalised due to outstanding disputes.
Godongwana said there was also a delay in tabling the annual report of Sasria due to a delay in the appointment of the external auditors as the entity only received the Auditor-General’s concurrence with the appointment on 28 June 2022.
“It would only be able to submit to me the documents by 30 November 2022, given the required board approval processes following the finalisation of the audit,” he said.
Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi said the UIF was unable to submit because its unlisted investments have different financial year-ends to the entity.
“The unlisted entities in which the UIF has invested its funds do not have audited financial statements which are required for the UIF to prepare together its own financial statements for submission to the AGSA for auditing,” Nxesi said.
He also said the Compensation Fund’s submission will be delayed until 30 November 2022.
“This was based on the work we had undertaken to correct all prior period errors that had contributed to the negative audit outcomes of the Compensation Fund.
“We have not completed the correction of prior period errors identified in the past audits and therefore, we are not ready for the audit,” Nxesi said.
Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande asked for extension of the submission of the annual report of the National student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) pending the auditing of its finances.
“There are some other issues that require further engagement with the AGSA to properly and appropriately account for these matters in the financial statements. “NSFAS is still engaging with AGSA to agree on the extension period, and we will advise Parliament once this is concluded,” Nzimande said.
Communications and Digital Technologies Khumbudzo Ntshavheni also asked for the postponement of the tabling of the annual report of the Broad Broadband Infraco and the Postbank.
“The reasons for not tabling the said reports relate to challenges to the timely completion of processes to finalise them before they can be submitted to the executive authority pursuant to section 55(1)(d) of the PFMA.
“The said reports will be tabled in November 2022 upon completion of the processes,” Ntshavheni said.
Cape Times