Will pre-audit deter crooks in the government?

Written by About Town / Ernesto Hilario
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 01:54

Starting August, the Commission on Audit (COA) will restore preaudits—the scrutiny of transactions before funds are released and recorded in the government’s books—that were discarded way back in 1995. This is a step in the right direction as it will act as a deterrent against financial anomalies.

The COA move is timely in view of reports that unliquidated cash advances of national government agencies have already reached P7.68 billion as of December 31, 2007, while those of local government units stood at P2.45 billion at year-end 2007, for a total of more than P10 billion. That amount could very well have funded the full automation of next year’s presidential polls, with several billions more available for constructing more schoolrooms or health centers, especially in the far-flung areas.

So what happens to the P10 billion that remains unliquidated by government officials and employees? The right thing to do is to make them cough up the money, sooner or later, whether through monthly salary deductions or perhaps subtracting the entire amount from their retirement benefits. But what if the miscreants have hightailed it to parts unknown, perhaps enjoying their loot in tropical Bahamas?

The preaudits are being restored to curb what the COA describes as “rising incidents of irregular, illegal, wasteful and anomalous” releases of public money and disposal of government property.

But we’re informed that preaudits will apply only to certain transactions of select national government agencies, local government units and government-owned and government-controlled corporations. Intelligence funds of various government agencies running into quite possibly tens of billions more will remain outside the scope of COA scrutiny, and are likely to end up God knows where.

In any case, we hope that with the restoration of preaudits, government auditors will succeed in putting the fear of the law in the unscrupulous and the greedy who believe that public funds are theirs for the taking.

So to answer the question: Will preaudits check corruption in government? Our guess is that it will not, since the crooks will always find creative but devious ways to get around the rules.

Source

Comment:

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. But something must be done to address the “rising incidents of irregular, illegal, wasteful and anomalous releases of public money and disposal of government property.” And the reinstitution of selective pre-audit on government transactions is the answer to that. To me, I think no one should be afraid of pre-audit because it is for the protection of officials/employees in the government agency.