Failure to ensure proper billing of income or expenses. differences between banking transactions and accounting of those, lack of maintaining details of assets, are some of the issues the Nepalese Office of Auditor General (OAG) found as it audits financials transactions of the local governments for the very first time. The office will be publishing its report in mid March which will give more details of their findings.
Why the recent audits you may ask, well the new constitution authorized the office to audit the finances of local governments- municipalities and rural municipalities. Under previous constitutions, the OAG audited transactions of various state organs, constitutional bodies and offices under the central government, but the local bodies used to have audits as provisioned by the Local Self-Governance Act-1999.
Would the audits bring more accountability at the local government level, only time would tell.
