Auditor General, Sue Winspear, is ‘delighted’ in the progress our government departments have made over the past FIFTEEN years in getting their financial reporting executed in time. Most, anyway, but there were some serious exceptions. FOUR out of the forty audits.

Unfortunately, these four are key agencies – The Ministry of Health, the Cayman Islands Airports Authority, The Cayman Turtle Centre and Cayman Airways Limited.

Even worse news concerning The Ministry of Health and the Cayman Islands Airports Authority. These two agencies have failed to complete their accounts for 2016 and 201717 as well!

All four have been in the news for the mismanagement of public funds and the lack of transparency, especially relating to the airport and the health ministry.

However, Winspear’s praise is justified as “The 2018 audit of the consolidated Entire Public Sector account which includes all 40 entities and the ‘executive’ expenditure and coercive revenues of Government remains outstanding and this audit received an adverse audit opinion in 2016-17,” she said.

There was some other good news. The Port Authority of the Cayman Islands and Water Authority – Cayman returned to profit for the first time since 2014!

Now for the bad news. Thirteen statutory authorities and government companies recorded a deficit in 2018. An ongoing problem.

As for our elected members who are Ministers. The Auditor General said many of them failed to take the reports they are responsible for, to the Legislative Assembly in “a reasonable time”. There are forty-nine reports from past years that have not been tabled over six months after they were completed.

Measuring output performance is still suspended as part of the help given the public sector book-keepers to get the books up to date.Therefore,“no robust assessment of service performance” by government entities can be assessed.

Winspear also said there are still problems relating to continued risks of mismanagement and abuse to non-compliance with laws, a decade and a half after the introduction of the Public Management and Finance Law.

This report does not include any information on the Entire Public Sector (EPS) account for 2018 as that audit is still outstanding. The EPS comprises the consolidation of all 40 public sector entities along with the additional expenditure and income of Government that is considered “Executive” in nature. In 2016‐17 Government’s EPS account was given an adverse opinion.

She thanked the staff of all public sector entities, “especially the Finance teams for their efforts and it is commendable that so many now have clean opinions. I would like to thank my team at the Office of the Auditor General and our contracted auditors at Eisner Amper, Grant Thornton, KPMG and PwC for their commitment and efforts in supporting this improvement.”

Judging from all the above I can say, “Government accounts are nearly there but NOT nearly enough!”