By Fatou Sillah
The Accountant General on Tuesday explained why a foreign exchange gain of D68.9 million was recorded as an expenditure in government accounts, telling lawmakers that the classification error did not affect the government’s overall cash position.
Appearing before officials during deliberations on the Auditor General’s reports covering the 2021 to 2024 fiscal years, the Accountant General said the gain—amounting to D68,930,296.87—was posted under an expenditure line because of long-standing accounting practices shaped by years of foreign exchange losses.
“In the previous years, we have been having exchange losses all along, the same loss. The line that is used to capture that transaction is an expenditure line, but for this particular year, we happened to have a gain.”
She said discussions with auditors during the finalization of the accounts considered two options: reclassifying the gain as revenue through journal adjustments or retaining it under expenditure while clearly marking it as a gain. Neither option was agreed upon, she said, and the amount remained recorded as an expenditure.
By the time the accounts were finalized, she added, “We could not agree on either of those two, so it was left as an expenditure line.”
The accountant general acknowledged the misclassification but maintained that it had no effect on the government’s closing cash balance, as the amount effectively offset expenditure totals.
“As much as the remarking was not done, the impact remained the same because it netted up against the expenditure,” she said.
Auditors, however, urged corrective measures to prevent similar issues in future financial statements, recommending clearer mapping of foreign exchange gains and losses within the government’s accounting system.
“We need to make sure that we do not have two accounts taking care of exchange gains and exchange losses; let’s make sure that it is actually prepared for upgrading within the system so that subsequently we are not going to have the same issue going forward.”
The accountant general said the matter would be addressed and assured lawmakers that the issue would not recur in subsequent audits.
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