PAC grills Central Regional Coordinating Council over GH¢14.88m GIFMIS breach

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has demanded answers from the Central Regional Coordinating Council over the processing of payment vouchers worth GH¢14.88 million outside the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).

The transactions, amounting to GH¢14,882,540.98, were flagged in the Auditor-General’s 2025 report on Ministries, Departments and other Agencies considered by the Committee on Tuesday, October 6, 2026.

Officials representing the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs told the Committee that the funds involved were donor-funded and had later been captured through journal vouchers.

According to the officials, the council began processing subsequent transactions through GIFMIS after the Auditor-General raised the issue.

The explanation, however, did not satisfy members of the Committee, who pressed the officials to explain why the payments were initially handled outside the financial management system.

One member questioned the basis for excluding the transactions from GIFMIS simply because the funds came from donors, pointing out that donor funds remained public resources and therefore required proper accounting.

The ministry representative explained that the donor-funded components had been incorporated into the council’s approved budget.

He said the difficulty emerged when the funds were released because the appropriate budget code required to process the transactions through GIFMIS was unavailable.

As a result, he said, journal vouchers were subsequently raised to capture the transactions and ensure that the expenditure was properly reflected in the accounts.

The explanation led to further scrutiny from the Committee, particularly over why the transactions were not processed through GIFMIS from the outset.

PAC warns against repeat breach

PAC Chairperson Abena Osei-Asare said the Committee’s concern extended beyond the specific transactions identified in the 2025 audit.

She said the Committee also wanted assurance that the underlying weakness had been addressed and would not recur.

Ms Osei-Asare warned that any recurrence of the same problem in a future audit would be treated as evidence that the institution had failed to implement the corrective measures it claimed to have introduced.

“If we find this, then clearly we will know that you failed to learn or you failed to implement the system that you are telling us you have implemented,” she said.

Her warning echoed comments she made at the beginning of the 2025 audit hearings, when she stressed that institutions appearing before the Committee must demonstrate what had changed following previous audit findings.

She said public institutions could not continue returning to the Committee with explanations for recurring weaknesses without showing evidence that the recommended corrective measures had been implemented.

According to the Committee Chairperson, the PAC would distinguish between administrative breaches and cases involving actual financial losses, but institutions would still be required to demonstrate that audit recommendations had been acted upon.

The Central Regional Coordinating Council’s representative maintained that the system had since been corrected, insisting that subsequent transactions were processed through GIFMIS while journal vouchers were used to capture the earlier transactions that had bypassed the system.