Extent of value for money(vfm)audits of public funds in Rwanda conducted by the office of the auditor general period of study: 2009-2013

Abstract

Citizens are increasingly demanding better quality service delivery and accountability from their governments. Also referred to as Value For Money audit, performance auditing is a systematic, purpose-driven and objective assessment of the performance of government activities. As governments are required to provide meaningful information on the allocation of scarce resources as well as the outcomes of its programmes and projects, performance auditing has become essential to improving governance and performance in the public sector. Incidentally, many governments and public sector organisations have limited capabilities to implement impactful performance auditing. The researcher distributed the questionnaires and their responses have been collected, compiled and analysed. Along with the questionnaires an interview was done and consulted various documents and audit reports to assess the nature and extend of VFM audits conducted by OAG. The findings confirmed that if more VFM audits are significantly conducted there will be improvement of economic acquisition of resources, improvement of services and outcomes achieved, prevention of misuse and reinforcement of accountability of authorities for public funds. The responses collected also confirmed that with adequate resources and skills the number of VFM audits can be increased and that the increase in the number of VFM audits do not necessarily result from the increase of the number of Auditors but that it depends also on the use of adequate resources. The OAG Rwanda should invest in both recruiting and training Performance auditors and acquiring adequate resources namely software to conduct more VFM audits for addressing growing public scrutiny.