29 Jan 2018

 Kweneng District Council has been advised to improve on its budget strategy according to the Auditor General’s report of the council’s records for the year ended March 31 2012.

This emerged during a special full council meeting on Thursday to discuss books of accounts tabled before the house.

Presenting the report, Finance committee chairperson, Councillor Mathata Selaledi stated that the Auditor General observed a worrisome trend, where revenue collection estimates were not realistic. He cited, for instance, that revenue collection from the council’s own sources stood at P15 839 395 against an estimated budget of P31 300 380, revealling a short fall of 49.40 per cent.

For this reason, he said the Auditor General noted that this was a worrisome state of affairs, which could bring doubts to the authenticity of the budget.

Again, the report highlighted that some revenue items had excess collections of more than 40 per cent above the budget while some were under collected by over 30 per cent of the budget such as Matimela Fund and Sanitation fees.

The report further noted with concern that the above variances for over and under collections were high, suggesting that the council was unable to estimate their revenue with a reasonable degree of accuracy, setting very low or very high estimates, which were of no guidance to management and thus defeated the objective of budgeting.

Therefore, the Auditor General’s report has advised that the council should make estimates more realistic to enhance revenue control.

Further, the council’s expenditure revealed that the council failed to furnish audit with some of their clients’ expenditure. Ends