🏛️The Auditor General's report
Last updated
Last updated
The Auditor-general of South Africa (AGSA) is the supreme audit institution. The AGSA has a mandate stemming from Chapter 9 of the Constitution to maintain a procurement and provisioning system that is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.
AGSA is given legislative effect and regulated by the Public Audit Act 24 of 2004 (PAA). It is required to audit and report on how taxpayers' money is spent in all national, provincial and muinicipal departments of government, and many SOEs. This means that every year, it examines the annual reports from these bodies in order to ensure they are free of irregularities and financial "misstatements". Misstatements may be errors or deliberate attemtpts to mislead.
Its reporting is also aligned to international standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative, King IV principles and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
AGSA produces three types of report, all of which can be found here.
PFMA (Public Finance Management Act) Reports relate to national and provincial government
MFMA (Municipal Finance Management Act) Reports relate to municipal government
Special Audit Reports relate to one-off investigations
The reports are broken down into separate documents by year. On both the PFMA and MFMA pages, you will see a general report, which consolidates the overall findings at a high level, and includes some notable details from the individual departmental reports. These are long, narrative reports with infographics.
The data that underpins this report is also published as an Annexure of audit outcomes. This is usually a spreadsheet document that looks like this.
There are other annexures too, including one which looks at financial health and supply chain management (SCM) indidcators. These may be much more useful than the report itself if you are looking for data to compare performance between similar organisations.
