Who is going to rely on these financial statements, and I have a whale waiting for them on the moon. This government was caught fudging their books last year or so, by one of our lenders and we had to repay the money with penalty. How can a country not produce audited financial statements 15 years and counting? How is this "compilation" going to help good governance? Folks, any fox can present you financial statements to your hearts pleasure. The question is, are these statements worth the papers they are written on? If not, then what's the hoopla about? Usefulness is the cornerstone of this exercise. This is for our lenders to reasonable estimate our credit worthiness and for the stakeholders (citizens) to know the financial health of their country. All these folks continue to do is to make sure that the asset side of the balance sheet equaled the liabilities and equity side, making sure in the process, that what ever they fudge to be net income snug perfectly as the equity plug in the above equation. I know some may say, "but the figures have support documentation". Question is, can those support statements/receipts stand on their own weight without collapsing because of top and bottom heaviness with padding. If they just compiled this fudge to cover a 10 year history, what were our lenders comfortable about? This can happen with the help of fly-by-night auditors from these lenders. I call them eagle auditors - auditing from a thousand miles into the sky - Swooooosh! If these audits were a person they'd be in high school, when they are born. Now, is this necessary, just because we are a "third world" country? Is this because of poverty? How about because of colonialization? This simply has to do with incompetence, corruption and fudging and nothing else. Let's do a quick exercise here, shall we? When our lives are graced and blessed by these statements, please let me know if Yaya's stolen wealth is reflected anywhere in those statements or the support documents there to, or the fine print they mask for footnotes? How about the millions of Dalasis missing from the Central Bank? You surely should see Lang's heist somewhere in that pile. What about Baba Jobe's? What period should they dump these loots? Next exercise is, do you think the majority of the rubberstamp will waste an hour combing these statements, forget about their worthlessness? I know four people among them will attempt to, to prove the obvious, but not before FJC whisper to Churchill and SM that they do not need to be lectured, followed by a quick "I" to accept as is. The other question is, do most of the rubberstamp know the difference between a debit and a credit? If not, then how can they sit there to obtain a copy, much more decide on its acceptance. Most of them are woke up just in time for them to vote at the signal of Churchill, most of the time. "What ever you do, just look at Churchill". That was the invention of BBJ, with the pit-bull in FJC to line the ducks in order or else. The punch line in this joke is that we have a thief work on his numbers for a decade, and we the people/fools to thank him for his timeliness. Not me! Hope is not lost though, the rosted peanut sellers will have some paper to wrap their products. I hope some of that bunch will not attempt to sell their copy, since most things APRC are for sale. Please read on. 1991 – 99 AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS SUBMITTED An official of the State Department for Finance and Economic Affairs has informed this reporter that the National Audit Office on Friday the 29th of April 2005 submitted the audited financial statements of government from the years 1991 – 1999 to the SoS for Finance for onward transmission to the National Assembly. The official termed the achievement as very crucial in the governance programme of the country. He asserted that the submission of audited accounts of government has been the top priorities of the country’s donor partners since the 2005 round table conference of the partners which was attended by the Vice President. The informant further opined that he only hoped that the government would continue to give the office of the Auditor General the enabling environment to complete the rest of the back-log of statements from the years 2000 – 2004. He called for closer cooperation between the offices of the Auditor General and the Accountant General’s Department, which he said had been lacking since the beginning of the second republic in 1997. The officer thanked the office of the Auditor General and staff for enabling the country fulfill this very important constitutional requirement to the citizens and donor community. ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤