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Chapter One of A Critical Analysis of Value for Money Audit in Public Sector
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Auditing has existed as long as man has been required to account for their transactions. A famous example is in St. Mathew’s Gospel (Chapter 25) when the rich man went on a journey and delivered his goods to a servant to look after them while he was away. On his return, he asked each of these servants to account for the goods with which he had been entrusted.
In the ancient ages, great land owners would not manage their own land, but would appoint stewards to manage their own land for them. The account of these land owners were checked by having them called out by those who gave them to those in authority (land owners) for hearing otherwise called stewardship accounting.
Auditing can be defined as the process of an independent examination of vouchers, internal control system and financial statements of an organization by a person or a group of persons called auditors so that the auditors can form and express opinion whether the vouchers, internal control system and financial statement, give a true and fair view of the organization.
Auditing is carried in both the public and private sectors. In the case of public sector, there are two foremost types of audit that are carried out namely: Regulatory audit and financial audit and the third type is value for money (VFM) audit which is yet to be fully integrated in most part of the world.
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According to Bechberger (2007), it is observed in the past decades that in order to fight global corruption and strengthening transparency and accountability in public sector organization across the world, public sector organizations are now under pressure from the public to integrate value for money principles in their management practices.
Value for money according to National Audit Office (2007) means providing a service or a product in a way which is economical efficient and effective. Value for money audit is therefore, the type of audit that is used to asses the value for money system in any organization. It is an independent examination of the criteria (economy, efficiency and effectiveness) for the value for money to confirm that the organizations available resources are used wholly, necessarily, reasonably and exclusively so as to maximize progress towards the chosen objective.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The research work “The critical analysis of value of money audit (VFM) and public sector performance in Enugu State centers on the major problems facing value for money audit in Enugu which includes:-
a. Problem of inconsistency in public sector objectives as a result of political and economic instability.
b. Diversity in accounting records or lack of uniformity in accounting records system among public sector organization.
c. The problem of cash basis rather than actual basis in public sector accounting.
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