Grocery purchases expose Presidency’s audit failures
PRETORIA — The Presidency has lost its clean audit status after procurement failures, including grocery purchases exceeding the R1 million quotation threshold, resulted in a finding against its spending controls.
The department’s 2025/26 annual report records R1.712 million in irregular expenditure linked to supply chain management non-compliance. Its financial statements identify groceries exceeding the threshold as one of the contributing items.
According to the Auditor-General, most of the irregular expenditure arose from procuring goods through written price quotations when spending exceeded R1 million. Effective measures to prevent irregular expenditure had not been taken.
The finding also exposed weaknesses in management oversight. The auditor concluded that senior management’s compliance monitoring was inadequate, allowing non-compliance to recur.
Although the Presidency retained an unqualified opinion on its financial statements, the compliance finding prevented a clean audit outcome. The department acknowledged in its annual report that the regression resulted from failing to prevent irregular expenditure as required by the Public Finance Management Act.
The distinction matters for understanding the findings: the financial statements fairly presented the department’s finances, while its procurement controls failed to meet the required standard.
In its response recorded in the annual report, the Presidency committed to strengthening internal controls, enforcing procurement compliance and applying consequence management. It said interventions included improving supply chain processes and filling critical vacancies.
The audit finding establishes a procurement breach. It does not, on its own, establish theft, inflated prices or failure to deliver the goods purchased.
Restoring a clean audit will depend on whether the Presidency’s corrective measures prevent the same failures from recurring.
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