Government still breaking spending rules
(CNS): The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) has concerns that government officials are still not following the proper process when it spends public money especially when contracting sole suppliers to do government business. In her latest report reviewing government’s financial reporting, although she acknowledged improvements on preventing fraud, Auditor General Sue Winspear raised the issue of non-compliance when it comes to the laws about spending public cash.
“We found a number of examples of non-compliance with relevant laws and regulations,” she said in the report, “Financial Reporting of the Cayman Islands Government: General Report 30 June 2015 & 2016”, which was released yesterday. “We continue to find instances of procurements not being carried out in accordance with the financial regulations, especially sole source procurements which inevitably were not competitively tendered.”
Although Winspear did not name or shame the specific public authorities or list how many had breached tendering rules, she said that officials had to begin managing their government departments in line with these newly adopted procedures and anti-fraud policies.
She said that while sole tendering can sometimes be appropriate, there should be “documented justifications and formal approvals for not following a competitive process”, which was usually missing.
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