The Auditor-General, Richard Quartey, has expressed concern about the failure of Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to produce financial statements to the service for audit. He said non-preparation of financial statements by MDAs was an expectation gap that had not been fulfilled since 2003 when the Financial Administration Act (Act 645) was passed and called on the government to properly and expeditiously address it. Mr Quartey was addressing the Audit Service Annual Accountability Lectures under the theme, "Bridging the expectation gap in the accountability process" held in Accra on Wednesday. He said though the Constitution and the Audit Service Act give the Auditor-General (AG) and his staff access right to information and documents, representatives of the A-G stationed at some ministries encounter significant difficulties, restrictions and delays in accessing such documents to allow proper audit of accounts of ministries. "When this happens it cannot be said that the audit of such institutions has been completed and the auditor cannot give a true and fair opinion on the state of affairs," he said. Mr Quartey said the citizens wanted to be informed and assured by the A-G that government and all public sector agencies had properly applied moneys collected on their behalf and that programmes and activities had yielded the desired results and expected impact. "The A-G has been able to fulfill this expectation only partially because over the years the service has not received sufficient funding to enable the necessary capacity required to close this gap fully and meet this high stakeholder expectation," he said. "The A-G is unable to inform parliament as to the completeness of financial informations, the principles and basis of accounting adopted and the truth and fairness and the valuation and state of their assets and liabilities, especially as they are essentially non-profit making institution," he added. Mr Quartey said when auditors unearth malpractices and other breaches of the financial regulations, the tendency was for auditors to handle such issues with kid gloves and the offenders went unpunished. He said "such apathetical attitudes encourage the continued perpetuation of malpractices and irregularities in the public financial management commitment," adding when offenders are not within the audited entity, but are third parties that transacted business with the entity, there are times that the auditee staff collaborate with the third party and attempt a cover up of the offence." Mr Quartey said failure on the part of management of some MDAs and Metropolitan, Municipals, and District Assemblies to establish Audit Report Implementation Committees as required by section 30 of the Audit Service Act 2000 led to the subsequent perpetration of various internal control weaknesses and other irregularities in the public financial management system.