Cooks Minister says working to overcome audit lack

Transcript

The Cook Islands Finance Minister, Mark Brown, has confirmed the government's consolidated accounts have not been audited for 3 years.

The opposition called the government's failure to organise a sign of a lack of transparency and irresponsibility.

It says it makes a mockery of the government's claim of astute, sound financial management.

Mr Brown told Don Wiseman the lack of audits is down to a lack of capacity but he says they are working to overcome the backlog.

MARK BROWN: What they're talking about is the consolidated crown account that needs to be audited. We have outstanding audit accounts to submit for 2013, 2014 and of course the last year 2015. But the problem has been, and it's an historical problem on why we have such a backlog on government audits - and there's three issues really, one of them is in terms of the capacity within various ministries and the outer island departments that are required to submit an actual statement. The second one is in terms of the system that we use and the fragmentation that currently exists within the separate agencies. And the third one is basically, more people are required in the audit department for us to be able to undergo the close to 50 separate audits of government agencies each year.

DON WISEMAN: They're the reasons you give but they're really just excuses aren't they. I mean, the government can't not put up the accounts for audit.

MB: That's right, I agree with that fully and we're doing what we can to overcome the backlog. We're employing more staff, we're actually actively recruiting from outside of the Cook Islands. It's difficult for us to retain Cook Island auditors within the current public service salary frame. They're often poached by the private sector or other agencies. So we're recruiting out of Fiji, as far away as that to try and get staff in the audit department. But also, the systems approach, we are looking to integrate all of the governments finance systems across agencies. And to that end we're investing close to 2 million dollars putting in place a finance management information system which will make the quality of information not only more accurate but easier to compile.

DW: In the meantime of course, how do you know just where you're at financially? The opposition say that there is a critical problem in the country, that the tax take as a result of the increase in GST resulted in no greater return. And they say that this is an indication of a very sharply declining economy and more people emigrating.

MB: Well that's just nonsense. All of the financial statements, although they're not audited by the audit department, we produce quarterly financial statements on the state of the government accounts and books. Our financial statements include an economic outlook, that includes information on tourism numbers that come in, it includes information on the tax take that we had. And we produce this quarterly. And the last year's quarterly report indicates clearly a significant surge in the economy, driven mainly by a record number of people driving the tourism industry. We're seeing great resurgence in the construction industry, but also on the back of that is the distinct government projects that are driving the economy up to newer levels. The audit aspect of it is something that we are addressing and we are pumping more money into improving firstly capacity within these remote islands to be able to produce timely finance reports.