Queries remain as CAG tables new audit report

 Dar es Salaam. As the Controller and Auditor General tables the annual audit reports for the 2015/16 fiscal year in Parliament today, questions remain unanswered on the fate of the queries raised in past reports yet to be addressed.

The reports form part of the CAG’s mandate as stipulated by Article 143 of the Constitution and the Public Audit Act No 11 of 2008. The CAG said last year some of the outstanding queries, which remain unanswered, date back to 2009.

Some of the queries highlighted in the 2014/15 report include the loss of Sh66 billion incurred by the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) due to unpaid loans, cancellation of projects and imprudent investment in housing estates; queries over a Sh42 billion contract entered between the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) and the Switzerland based Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS). The contract signed in 2013 was to undertake a Telecommunication Traffic Monitoring System (TTMS) and CAG indicated that the country lost Sh400 billion yearly in mobile phone tax revenues; queries over the debt the government owes PSPF pension fund, which had reached Sh716 billion.

Even more significantly, the CAG expressed concern, in a 2014/15 report, over the Tanzania Revenues Authority’s (TRA) failure to collect Sh7.8 trillion due to negligence, inefficiency and backlog of court cases.

The CAG also raised concern over the execution of flagship projects under the Second Five-Year Development Plan (FYDP II) 2016/17-2020/21.

The projects are the Mchuchuma coal mine, the Liganga iron ore, the construction of the central railway line in standard gauge (SGR) and revival of the national airline carrier.

But the CAG raised concern over the strategic and operational efficiency of the three public entities that are charged with the execution of the projects, the National Development Corporation (NDC), Reli Assets Holding Company (Rahco) and Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL), as he argued that they are beset by either bad performance or poor financial arrangements.

The government has been acting on some of the queries. The Pay Master General (PMG) is also mandated to prepare government responses and submit them to the CAG by June this year. But some of the queries are yet to be fully solved or dealt with.

As regards the NSSF’s Sh66 billion loss is concerned, the government replaced NSSF director general Dr Ramadhan Dau and fired six senior directors and five senior managers pending investigations. Dr Dau was appointed Tanzania’s ambassador to Malaysia.

President John Magufuli sacked TCRA’s boss Dr Ally Simba and dismissed board chairman Prof Haji Semboja over the TTMS issue. However it is not clear how these actions will recover the billions lost.

The government yesterday launched the SGR project for the first 300km. President Magufuli bought two planes for the ATCL but CAG’s queries over the operational efficiency of ATCL have not been tackled.