George Guvamatanga, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, lamented over the shortage of chartered accountants in the government.
Whilst launching the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Implementation Strategy Plan in Harare yesterday, Guvamatanga revealed that Zimbabwe has only one chartered accountant. He said this shortage of skilled human capital makes it hard to deal will compliance issues throughout government. He said:
For a company to be listed on the ZSE, there is a requirement that it should have a chartered accountant within the skills set of the organisation.
We then have the biggest organisation in the land which is the government of Zimbabwe, you have been told that I was a banker before, I used to run an institution which had a balance sheet of $500m and we had 17 chartered accountants. I come to the government and I’m asked to run a $10bn balance sheet with one chartered accountant.
Guvamatanga added:
When Honourable Tendai Biti calls me and says you’re not complying, where is this report? Honourable Biti, you should understand that it cannot be delivered with just one accountant, and there is really an issue with skills.
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In Kenya we are over flooded with CPAs (certified public accountants)
May be we should migrate
Yes it is true that you can’t run an effective government with only one chartered accountant.There is bound to be loopholes in the financial sector.
I totally disagree. This big brother syndrome will not take us anywhere in Zimbabwe. Who said CAs are the only Accountants in Zimbabwe? This flies in the face of PAAB when a whole Permsec cannot appreciate the composition of PAAB which include: CIMA, ACCA, CIS and the like. Infact most Banks and companies that have gone down were run by CAs. NSSA, Barbican, Royal Bank etc. The highest Accounting qualification in Zimbabwe according to the Act is Registered Public Accountant or Public Auditor. CAs are primarily trained for the private sector and it is the duty of the Minister to support all PAAB bodies to strengthen its public sector modules. Current two pilots were identified by IFAC for CIS and ICAZ then spread to other bodies later.