Vice-President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons has described the 2021 Auditor-General’s report as empty and valueless.

Mr. Simons noted that the yearly Auditor-General’s report is not detailed to effectively audit some of the government’s flagship programmes.

He said the auditor general’s reports in some instances are full of errors with no outright coverage of most essential aspects of the country’s economy.

He argued that for a national auditor report, auditing should revolve around what is causing the nation to be on its knees.

According to him, "a lot of people then make agitations when we have the Auditor General’s reports but the Auditor General’s reports are very hollow."

"It has nothing in it, a lot of the issues that we really face in Ghana those of us that really work on them day by day, they do not get reported. I have given you few examples, look at one village, one dam when was the last time we had a serious analysis of the spending on one village, one dam in the auditor general’s report, look at one district one factory, look at the electoral registration, the EC, an organization that claims to have thrown away over 2000 laptops, nobody has done an asset audit to find out where that equipment went.

"The auditor general’s reports are not detailed as we think it is, sometimes there are errors and lack of quality and outright coverage…in a national auditor report, you go for materiality, what are the things that make difference to Ghana’s bottom lines,” he said during a speech at the 2022 Baah-Wiredu Memorial lecture on Thursday.

Mr. Simmons further explained that the majority of the country’s spending does not pass through the central accounting system known as the Ghana Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS).

This, he noted has caused the country’s accounting system to be in disarray as a lot of the country’s money is not under control.

“A lot of the money is not passing through the central accounting system. In fact, it is quite frightening because when you look at the totals about 80% of the money is not passing through GIFMIS, it is kind of crazy but those are the numbers that the auditors find. These all discrepancies,” he added.

The 2022 Baah-Wiredu Memorial lecture was organised by the Ghana Institute of Public Policy Option in partnership with The Multimedia Group.

It took place at the Kofi Annan India ICT Centre under the theme: "Buying for the Public Good from the Public Purse. Redeeming Ghana's Fiscal Sanity in the Asylum of Public Financial Reforms."