Auditor-General laments insufficient budget for her office

Mohloai Mpesi

THE Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) has decried its M30 million budget allocation for the 2026/27 financial year, saying it is insufficient to meet its operational needs and has left the institution struggling with mounting debts.

The concerns emerged before the parliamentary Economic and Development Cluster Committee this week after it summoned the OAG to review its 2026/27 budget allocation.

Auditor-General, ’Mathabo Makenete, told the Committee that the OAG had been receiving inadequate funding since the 2020/21 financial year compared with the amounts it has requested.

For the 2026/27 financial year, the office requested M67 million but was allocated only M30 million — the same amount it received in the previous financial year.

Ms Makenete said the allocation was barely enough to cover salaries, leaving the office without adequate funds for other operational expenses.

She said the OAG previously operated under the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning until the enactment of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution Act, 2025, which came into force on 13 August 2025 and provided for the office to report to Parliament.

“According to the Audit Act of 2016, the Office of the Auditor-General was reporting to the Ministry of Finance until the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution was enacted in August last year.

“All the reports and budgets were submitted to the Minister of Finance; we were subsumed by the Ministry of Finance. We were treated as part of the Ministry of Finance.

“After the Tenth Amendment was enacted, we understood that we had to report to Parliament, as per Section 116, which says the Speaker of the National Assembly shall designate a parliamentary committee to approve the budget of the Supreme Audit Institution,” she said.

Ms Makenete said the office submitted its M67 million budget request to the Ministry of Finance on 19 December 2025 after warning that its M30 million allocation for 2025/26 would not last the full financial year.

She said the OAG had already exhausted the allocation by October or November and had requested an additional M9 million to sustain its operations until March 2026.

“Unfortunately, that request was not accepted,” she said.

Office drowning in debt

Ms Makenete further told the Committee that the OAG entered the 2026/27 financial year with significant unpaid debts, although she did not disclose the amount owed or the exact creditors.

“We started the new 2026/2027 financial year with a lot of debt that we could not pay,” she said.

She said the office had requested M32 million in 2020/21 and was allocated the same amount, of which it spent M30 million.

In 2021/22, it requested M38 million but received M26 million, which remained its allocation until 2024/25.

The allocation increased to M30 million in 2025/26 and remained at the same level for 2026/27.

Ms Makenete said the OAG’s funding requirements had increased over the years because of staff growth, salary adjustments and expanding operations.

“We have been working very well with the Ministry of Finance all these years, but this year there was a big problem. We have explained that the Office of the Auditor-General increased its staff and made salary adjustments,” she said.

Autonomy

Chairperson of the Committee, Sello Hakane, told the OAG that it would henceforth report to the Economic and Development Cluster pending the establishment of the authority responsible for overseeing the institution under the Tenth Amendment.

This followed a 21 July 2026 letter from National Assembly Speaker, Tlohang Sekhamane, asking the Committee to intervene in what he described as an impending crisis at the OAG.

In the letter, Mr Sekhamane designated the Committee, in terms of Section 116(4) of the Tenth Amendment, to engage the OAG and the Ministry of Finance to find a solution, including reviewing the OAG’s budget through a supplementary allocation.

The Speaker said the funding shortfall could adversely affect the OAG’s ability to discharge its constitutional mandate.

“You can also establish a subcommittee to assist the Committee in this assignment in order to expedite recommendations to the House for its final decision; most preferably, the Minister of Finance can act mero motu (voluntarily) to avert this impending crisis,” the letter reads.

Mr Hakane told the OAG: “From today, we will be expecting you to report to this Committee, while we wait for the institution to be formed, which will provide the necessary transition for your office.

“From today, we are expecting you to report everything about the office to this committee.”

Deputy Auditor-General, Paul Letlela, said the M30 million allocation was insufficient even to meet the OAG’s salary obligations.

“It is clear that we did not receive money for the fourth quarter of the 2025/2026 financial year; the office carried all the debt into 2026/2027, which caused us to request M67 million.

“The Ministry of Finance allocated M30 million again, yet it was clear that the 2025/2026 actual expenditure stood at M45 million, and the actual requirement for 2026/2027 was M67 million; the work plan was disregarded.

“As we stand now, the M30 million is insufficient to pay employees’ salaries. It is short of M8 million for this financial year.

“Looking at the 2026/2027 financial year, it can only pay employees’ salaries, meaning the office does not have money for petrol, vehicle maintenance and other operating costs. We have had to suspend other activities such as training and audits.

“Without petrol, it is difficult to audit; our work has effectively stalled,” he said.

Committee member, Itumeleng Rantšo, questioned why the OAG was struggling to secure adequate funding when other oversight institutions that gained autonomy under the Tenth Amendment had not raised similar concerns.

“For a moment, it seems like the Office of the Auditor-General is an orphan. This is not the only institution that gained autonomy through the Tenth Amendment and moved out of its designated ministry.

“I am thinking of the Office of the Ombudsman, which has also acquired autonomy, and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. They report directly to the National Assembly.

“The Ombudsman has never come here with a similar financial concern to that of the Auditor-General. From her initial explanation, it appears the Ministry of Finance has been ignoring them,” she said.

Ms Rantšo questioned whether the Tenth Amendment was being implemented selectively.

“When do we implement this Tenth Amendment issue? Do we only do it when it suits the Ministry of Finance? Is the ministry applying the law selectively?

“Why is our oversight institution left in this bitter position, unable to pay its costs due to an insufficient budget, simply because the Ministry of Finance decided it no longer reports to them but to Parliament? It is not fair,” she said.

However, the Deputy Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Malereko Molefi, told the Committee that the OAG had demonstrated low budget-consumption capacity in previous years.

She said budget allocations were based partly on an institution’s ability to spend the funds allocated to it.

“As the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, there has never been a time when there were enough resources to cover all the ministries and institutions; there is a criterion for allocating budget.

“One of the criteria is to allocate a budget based on the capacity of the institution to spend that money,” Ms Molefi said.

She cited previous years in which the OAG had requested more money than it ultimately spent, saying the institution had requested M32 million in one financial year, was approved for M32 million but received M31 million and spent M30 million.

In another year, it requested M38 million, was approved for M26 million and spent M18 million. On another occasion, it requested M38 million, was approved for M23 million and spent M21 million.

She said the Budget Controller, Maleshoane Lekomola-Denziger, considered an institution’s spending capacity when allocating funds.

“The Budget Controller allocates a budget according to an institution’s capacity to consume that money.

“However, when you request an additional budget, it becomes incorporated into your annual budget if it is not for a once-off activity but an ongoing one, hence the additional budget becomes part of your total budget for that particular year, because the expectation is that you will keep funding that activity.

“It also includes their revenues, because they charge for their services, and that revenue is part of their total spending,” she said.

The post Auditor-General laments insufficient budget for her office appeared first on Lesotho Times.