Maria Rodriguez Defends Audit Office Amid Backlog Criticism

The Auditor General’s Office is preparing to review ten years of spending at the Ministry of National Defense, but it is also under fire for a backlog of its own. Belize’s latest government-wide audit still dates back to 2017–2018. Auditor General Maria Rodriguez says her office is not the holdup. She says the audits cannot be finalized because the Accountant General has not submitted the required annual financial statements. Now, Rodriguez wants the law changed so completed audits can be released without years of delay.

 

Maria Rodriquez, Auditor General

“Let me explain what is happening. FARA 16 says that I need to provide an, an audit certification along with a compilation of all my audits that I do for a fiscal year. So for me to provide a, an opinion, I need to receive the annual statements from the accountant general. The last account, um, the last annual statements received was for 2017-2018, which is what I tell you will be tabled tomorrow, should be tabled tomorrow. I depend on her to submit her work for me to be able to submit my work. And again, I go back to the reason for our session today, which was to begin the conversation that I don’t want to wait for her and I don’t want to wait for the Prime Minister to table my work. I want to be able to share my audits with the public as soon as it is completed. And so I have asked, um, support from IDI to help me come up with a, a possible solution as to how to remove the backlog from audit reports. We have hundreds of reports from 2020, 2017, 2018, 2018, 2019, 2019, 2020 that we can compile every year and submit without waiting for the annual statements. But because of FARA, I have to wait. I have to wait for that submission. And so the delay is really on the accounting aspect of it, not the auditing aspect of it. As long as it is submitted, it will be audited, but it’s not being submitted at this time.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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