Ghana’s Public Accounts Committee has questioned the Central Regional Coordinating Council over payment vouchers worth GH¢14.88 million that were processed outside the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System. The council’s representative said the payments involved donor funds, a budget-code problem and later journal vouchers. The PAC said a repeat finding in a future audit would indicate that promised corrective measures had not been implemented. The source report does not establish that public money was lost or misused.
What the audit identified
The issue arose during the PAC’s sitting on 6 October 2026, as members considered the Auditor-General’s 2025 report on Ministries, Departments and other Agencies. The audit finding said the Central Regional Coordinating Council had failed to process payment vouchers totalling GH¢14,882,540.98 through GIFMIS. The system is Ghana’s integrated financial management route for recording government transactions. Processing a voucher outside it means the original payment does not pass through that prescribed electronic workflow at the time it is made. The committee questioned the departure from that control, while the report itself does not say that the payments caused a financial loss.
How the council explained the exception
A representative of the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs told the committee that the transactions involved donor funds and were later captured through journal vouchers. He said the funds were part of the approved budget and that donor components had been included during the budget process. The difficulty, he explained, arose when the releases were made because the budget code required to process the transactions through GIFMIS was unavailable or otherwise problematic. Journal vouchers were then raised to capture the earlier transactions on the system and make the accounts reflect the expenditure. The representative maintained that subsequent transactions had gone through GIFMIS.
Why the PAC is treating it as a control issue
The explanation did not settle the committee’s concern about why the transactions had initially bypassed GIFMIS. One member stressed that donor funds remained public funds, so their source did not by itself justify exclusion from the government’s financial management system. Chairperson Abena Osei-Asare said the question extended beyond the transactions already identified: the institution also had to show that the system had been corrected. She warned that if the same breach appeared in a subsequent audit, the committee would regard it as evidence that the council had failed to implement the corrective system it said was in place. No such repeat breach is reported here.
What this means for procurement and public finance
The case illustrates a transferable control principle in public spending: a funding source does not necessarily change the required route for recording expenditure. Where a payment voucher is meant to pass through an integrated management system, a later journal voucher can correct the accounting record, but it does not erase the question of why the original workflow was unavailable. The PAC’s approach is to distinguish administrative infractions from actual financial losses while still requiring institutions to demonstrate that audit recommendations have been acted on. The council says later transactions were processed through GIFMIS; the committee will test that assurance against future audit evidence.
| Fact | Details |
|---|---|
| Institution questioned | Central Regional Coordinating Council |
| Committee | Public Accounts Committee |
| Value identified | GH¢14,882,540.98 |
| System | Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) |
| Audit considered | Auditor-General’s 2025 report |
| Stated explanation | Donor funds, a budget-code issue and subsequent journal vouchers |
| Future test | A subsequent audit finding of the same breach |
If we find this, then clearly we will know that you failed to learn or you failed to implement the system that you are telling us you have implemented.
WHY IT MATTERS
The PAC is testing whether an identified weakness was corrected, not only whether the earlier transactions can be reconstructed. For suppliers and public bodies, the lesson is that approved funding and later accounting entries do not automatically replace the required financial-management route. The source reports questions about potential misuse of public funds, but no misuse or loss has been proven.
Reported from myjoyonline.com, 2026-10-06. The Tender Wire is published by Otnox.
