04 Jul 2019

Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Kenneth Matambo has dismissed as untrue the allegations that there are  missing government funds from the remittance account held at  Bank of Botswana.

Mr Matambo was responding to a question in Parliament, about the P22 billion reported as missing by Gazzette Newspaper recently.

He clarified to Parliament that the Auditor General  had expressed concerns over the reconciliation of government bank accounts, making up the year-end totals in her report on governments accounts for the financial year ended 31 March 2018.

 He said the Auditor General reported that the reconciliation statement of the remittance account included unreconciled payment of P2.27 billion and unreconciled receipts of P19.66 billion, which should have been cleared, noting that no funds were reported missing.

Therefore, the minister said that the P22 billion reported by the newspaper seemed to have been arrived at by adding together receipts and payments that represented all government revenues and other public money from both local and foreign sources deposited into the bank account, while payments related to all local and foreign disbursements for goods and services supplied to government.

 Mr Matambo explained that reconciliation was a process not an event, therefore the ministry strove for continuous improvement in making these accounts current.

The remittance account’s unreconciled to date, he said, had been substantially reduced and the amounts stand at P870 million for payments and P10.75 billion for receipts. 

This, he said, was against the P2.27 billion and P19.66 billion for payments and receipts respectively that appeared in the Auditor General’s report.

Furthermore, he said that the audited annual financial statements of  Bank of Botswana were submitted to Parliament by April 30 of each year as required by Bank of Botswana Act, Cap 55;01.

The bank’s successive financial statements, he said, had generated clean audit reforms that confirm appropriate maintenance of accounts, existence of sound risk management and internal control environment as well as effective governance structures at the bank.

Jwaneng-Mabutsane legislator, Mr Shaun Ntlhaile had asked the minister if it was true that government funds were missing  from the remittance account at Bank of Botswana. Ends