Why didn’t the Auditor qualify SAA’s annual report?
3 October 2016
Given the internal SAA Treasury memo issued in August 2016, well ahead of the Auditors signing off on the annual financial statements, it is peculiar that the Auditors did not qualify SAA’s annual report, as this could have material bearing on South Africa’s impending credit rating adjustment.
The DA will write to the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) to request that they conduct an investigation into the failure of the SAA auditors to qualify the 2015/16 SAA annual financial statements. The Directors Report, signed by Dudu Myeni, that asserts that SAA remains a going concern for the 12 months from the date of approval i.e. from the 18th of September 2016 would seem to be a misrepresentation of the going concern status.
The Auditors only signed the 2015/16 Independent Auditors’ Report on the 30th of September 2016, the same day that the report was due to be tabled in Parliament and was no doubt signed under pressure from SAA in order to meet the 30th of September deadline commitment given to Parliament.
The Auditors did not include any qualification of the going concern assumption by SAA, this despite SAA Treasury itself some two months previously apparently issuing an internal memo that points out that the R 4,7 million government guarantee would not provide sufficient funding to meet loan repayments as well as working capital requirements and that a guarantee of R7.0 million was what was required for the 2016/17 year.