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Brown/FRRaG (Financial Reporting, Regulation and Governance) 2009 8:1
Reporting Performance of Fiji Public Sector between the Coups
Alistair M. Brown Curtin University of Technology
Contact Details Alistair M. Brown School of Accounting, Curtin Business School Curtin University of Technology GPO Box U1987 Perth, WA 6845, Australia Email: [email protected] Abstract This paper seeks to examine the reporting performance of the Fiji Islands public sector entities for the period 2001-2005 as evidenced by the tabling of annual reports of Fijian government entities to Fiji’s parliament. A triangulation approach is adopted involving textual analysis of audit reports of the Whole of Government generated by the Office of the Auditor General, descriptive statistical and ANOVA analysis of the generation of annual reports tabled by five types of Fijian public sector entities to parliament, and semi-structured interview analysis of key stakeholder observations of reporting performance of public sector entities in Fiji. The study finds that throughout the five-year time-period, very few public sector entities table an annual report. When annual reports of public sector entities are tabled, many are late or do not contain core financial statements. Further research might examine the leadership qualities of annual report generation rather than merely the filing and timing of reports, a major limitation of this research. While the recommendations made by the paper may improve reporting, the willingness to accept the changes may prove problematic. This study offers a comprehensive account, beyond the descriptive of the reporting performance of Fijian public sector entities over a long period of time. The triangulated research approach offers interpretivist Fijian-contextualised solutions to improve the reporting performance of Fijian public sector reporting. Key words: public sector entities, reporting performance, annual reports Acknowledgements The author would like to acknowledge the very helpful advice given by the editor and referees.
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Reporting Performance of Fiji Public Sector between the Coups
Introduction
After nearly a century of British colonial rule, Fiji became independent in 1970 adopting
a Westminster system style of democracy, which subsequently became interrupted by two
military coups in 1987 (Ramesh, 2007). The coups were caused by concern by “ethno-
nationalist” factions over a government perceived as dominated by the Indo-Fijian
community (Bainimarama, 2007). A new constitution promulgated in 1990 ensured
native Melanesian control of Fiji but resulted in heavy Indo-Fijian emigration leading to
economic difficulties (CIA, 2001). A new “equitable” constitution was enacted in 1997
(CIA, 2007) and free elections in 1999 resulted in a government led by Indo-Fijian prime
minister Chaudhry (Fiji Turago, 2007).
An attempted civilian-led coup in 2000 was followed by the declaration of martial law
and dissolution of parliament by Bainimarama, commander of the Fiji Military Forces,
with prime minister Qarase subsequently appointed to lead an interim government
(Ramesh, 2007). Parliamentary elections held in 2001 provided Fiji with a democratically
elected government led by prime minister Qarase who was re-elected in 2006 (Fiji
Turago, 2007). In December 2006 he was ousted by a military coup led by Bainimarama,
who initially appointed himself acting president and then was appointed interim prime
minister in 2007 (Buksh, 2007).
The recent disruption to parliamentary democracy in Fiji together with militaristic
solutions to Fiji’s governance issues (Bainimarama, 2007) makes fertile ground for the
study of the reporting performance of Fiji’s public sector entities: the
ministries/departments; statutory authorities; commercial government entities; municipal
councils; and provincial councils. The public sector is the largest employer and spender
in Fiji (PAC, 2001; p. 7) and is responsible for supplying goods and services to its
multiple Fijian stakeholders and constituencies. The public sector is also responsible for
supplying accounts of its activities through the generation of annual reports to its multiple
stakeholders and constituencies (Cameron, 2004; Guthrie, Parker and English, 2003; Coy,
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Fischer and Gordon, 2001) where, following Stanton and Stanton (2002), an annual
report is considered as comprising both descriptive information about the public sector
entity (and its activities) and statutory information of an audited general purpose finance
report (or audited core financial statements).
A prime motivation of the this study, therefore, is to analyse the annual reporting
performance of the whole of Fijian government over the relatively recent period 2001 to
2005, particularly given the aftermath of the coups, and to evaluate whether there are any
significant differences in the generation of annual reports across Fiji public sector entity
type. There are five public sector entity types in Fiji: ministries/departments; statutory
authorities; commercial government entities; municipal councils; and provincial councils.
Given, the subtle differences in their public sector remit, it is important to consider
variations in the reporting performance of these entity types, particularly given the need
by Fiji’s public sector accounting regulators and strategists to improve public sector
performance (OAG, 2006a).
The research question and its justification
This paper examines the reporting performance of Fijian public sector entities between
the last two coups of 2000 and 2006, and poses the following research question:
RQ: What trends can be detected in the reporting performance of the Fijian government
entities over the period 2001 to 2005?
This study is important for a number of reasons. First, it is one of the first papers to offer
a comprehensive account, beyond the descriptive of the reporting performance of Fijian
public sector entities over a long period of time. Whilst an expanding literature has been
written on individual Fijian entities’ accounting (Davie, 1999; 2000; 2004; Lodhia, 2002;
Nandan and Alam, 2005) little research has been conducted on the reporting performance
of Fijian public sector entities in aggregated terms.
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Second, the results of the study set in context the remarks made in a speech to the United
Nations in 2007 by Bainimarama Fiji Military Force’s (FMF) leader who said that the
military conducted the 2006 coup because “Fiji’s overall governance situation had
regressed to a catastrophic level” (Bainimarama, 2007). The study’s evidence of
reporting weaknesses of key public sector entities may help elucidate this perception,
particularly given the FMF’s own reporting performance during this time and the
expected disruption to reporting brought about by the coup’s changes in top level
government offices of Fiji’s public sector entities. The coup periods in Fiji make
reporting performance an important phenomenon to examine because all Fiji’s coups
have been justified by appeals to the greater good, particularly in terms of accountability
(Fraenkel and Firth, 2007).
Normally, in a parliamentary democracy, the military operates under civilian authorities so that its coercive power is manageable and accountable. A military with special interventionist powers may not be good for stability and democracy. The role of the military is one of the dilemmas of post-colonial militaries, in which there have been difficulties in making it align with and accountable to civilian rule. This dilemma is partly historical because, since the colonial and post-colonial period, many post-colonial militaries have been used as active components of political governance by colonial and post-colonial élites. During the colonial days, as we have seen in the case of Fiji, the role of the military was to help maintain internal security. The Fiji military was groomed as part of the Fijian élite power structure, and its intervention in 1987 on behalf of Fijian nationalism was a violent manifestation of this (Ratuva, 2007; p. 43).
The nature of the military’s public relations exercises after the 1987 coups, according to
Ratuva (2007), was the ‘civilianization’ of the military and the militarization of Fijian
civilian life where senior officers were recruited into senior civil service positions and
many civilians were absorbed into the military, where they held military rank. Tension
between the government and the military preceding the 2006 election resulted in
sustained criticism by the military’s pre-election campaign against the government,
notably on the performance of politicians and public servants.
Third, this paper offers some recommendations on improving the reporting performance
of Fiji’s public sector entities. While Chand and White (2007) endorsement of an Asian
Development Bank recommendation to set up an independent oversight body to review
government financial reports, might prove helpful for reporting improvements, this paper
suggests the raising of extant Fijian accounting leadership exemplars as a way to improve
government financial reports may prove particularly useful.
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In investigating the role and importance of the annual report as a source of public sector
information, Ryan and Mack (2007) found that in an Australian public sector context, the
annual report was an important source of information about public sector entities but was
not as an important source of information as personal contact with the entity. Ryan and
Mack (2007) also found that the annual report was not regarded as equally important
across all public sector entity types: government owned corporation stakeholders and
municipal government authority stakeholders both rated the annual report as a very
important source of information, while government department stakeholders rated the
annual report as an important, rather than very important, source of information.
There are compelling reasons why an annual report for a Fijian government entity is
important. First, the annual report allows a government entity to discharge “a wide range
of summarized relevant information in a single document” (Coy et al. 2001) to a wide
array of stakeholders. Here, the annual report provides a means for stakeholders to gauge
whether the objectives of the government entity are being achieved. Second, the annual
report is an important source of qualitative and quantitative information about an entity
Swanepoel & Smit (2003), the “main disclosure vehicle” (Marston & Shrives, 1991, p.
196), “a useful reference point” (Parker, 1982, p. 285) and “a mass communication
medium” (Parker, 1982, p. 279).
The remaining discussion in the paper is divided into four sections. The next section
theorises Fiji’s public sector reporting based on reporting models in a Pacific Island
Country (PIC) context. The next section then explains the research methods of the paper.
A mixed methodology is presented. Textual analysis of the Office of the Auditor
General’s auditor reports for the Whole of Government, statistical analysis of annual
report generation by public sector entities, and semi-structured analysis of key public
sector respondents are used to gather insights of the reporting performance of public
sector entities. This is followed by the results of the study in two phases. The final section
then presents the paper’s conclusion about the pattern of Fijian public sector reporting
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over a five-year time period and provides recommendations to improve government
reporting in Fiji.
Fijian Reporting
In recent times, there has been a considerable increase in theoretically oriented work with
a variety of research methods on accounting in the Pacific Island Country (PIC) region
comprising the countries of Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon
Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Such work includes environmental perspectives of
Fijian accounting (Lodhia, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002), a cultural theory and
ethnography of economic and political reforms in the Central Pacific Republic of Kiribati
(Dixon, 2004), a theory on the aesthetics of ambiguities in accounting of a Fijian entity
(Davie, 1999), a critical theory of British imperialistic influence on Fijian accounting
(Davie, 2000), a total quality management implementation appraisal of a Fijian public
sector entity (Sharma and Hoque, 2002), a critical perspective of post-colonial accounting
in a Fijian context (Alam, Lawrence and Nandan, 2004), a critical theory of accounting
and reform initiatives of a Fijian state owned enterprise (Davie, 2004), a structuration
theory of changes in management control systems in a Fijian development bank (Nandan
and Alam, 2004), a comparative analysis of the same Fijian development bank (Irvine
and Deo, 2006), a discourse on Fijian race and accounting in a colonial context (Nandan
and Alan, 2005), a moral-ethical theory of stakeholder importance in PIC (Brown, Tower
and Taplin, 2004a), and a critical perspective of the influence of globalization and
convergence of accounting standards in Fiji (Chand and White, 2007).
But none of these dense works of micro-situations provides a comprehensive analysis of
the more prosaic issues of the extant reporting performance of Fijian government entities,
which in the past (1997-1999) have produced low levels of annual reports (Brown and
Tower, 2002). Thus, while it appears possible to explicate a theory of aesthetics of
ambiguity on the basis of a report generated by an entity (Davie, 1999), it is a little more
problematic to invoke such a theory when an entity does not report. And while it is
possible to make inferences about British imperialistic influences on Fijian accounting
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when text is presented for deconstruction, it becomes more difficult to make inferences
about imperialism when text is absent.
The matter of non-reporting by entities the PIC region was examined by Brown and
Tower (2002) who empirically classified PIC entities’1 reporting as either Traditional
(little written reporting but some oral reporting), Western-Narrow (written financial
reporting) or Western-Broad (written financial and non-financial reporting). This,
however, was conducted in a time period (1997-1999) where Fijian and other PIC-
government reporting was very much set in the Traditional Reporting model pattern.
Correspondence from Fiji government ministers in 1999-2000 outlined the reasons for
the issue of non- or late government reporting. These reasons may be summarised on the
basis of politics,
I refer to your letter of 25/6/00 requesting our annual report for the financial year 1999 and regret to advise that this report is yet to be prepared and published. It is likely that this will remain pending for sometime given the current situation in the country (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2000).
resources,
Enclosed is our Annual Report for 1994. Your request has been noted and we will be forwarding a copy to you as they are printed (Ministry of Works and Energy, 1999).
or custom
I must be frank with you. The Ministry of Finance has never produced any Financial Report for the last years, and it has been a coincidence that you are now asking for a copy of our 1999 Annual Report. We are in the process of producing our first Annual Report this year, i.e. the 1999 Annual Report and it should be ready by early October 2000. The non-production of the Ministry’s Annual Report does not mean that we are not producing any annual report at all. The Ministry has been producing the Report on Accounts and Finance of the Whole of Government on an annual basis and is normally tabled in Parliament by the Minister for Finance in October (Ministry of Finance, 2000).
These non- or late reporting performances, which are characteristics of the Traditional
Reporting model, are also acknowledged in a Fijian public sector context by the Office of
Auditor General (OAG, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c) and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC,
1 These entities included profit-making, not-for-profit, government and partial government entities.
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2001), the latter of which noted that many ministries and government departments took
no corrective action on reporting matters raised by the OAG (PAC, 2001, p. 4),
“blatantly” disregarded instructions and procedures laid down by the Finance Act and
PSC Act (p. 4), did not provide reader friendly accounts (p. 6) and made little effort to
increase the pool of qualified accounting officers (p. 7).
But much has changed since Fiji’s third coup in 2000. Fiji possesses wide-ranging
tertiary accounting and commercial institutions (University of South Pacific, 2008; Fiji
Institute of Technology, 2008), a growing number of qualified, professional accountants
and expanding professional accounting membership (Fiji Institute of Accountants, 2008),
a presence of Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditing firms, a plethora of allegedly well-intentioned
international non-profit accounting organizations willing to help government entities out
on accounting matters, and a well established Office of the Auditor General which, at least
once a year, must inspect, audit and report to Parliament on the State’s public accounts and
on the State’s control and transactions of public money and property. The Constitution
Amendment Act 1997 (s. 167(7), Audit Act (Cap 70)) and the Finance (Control and
Management) Act (FMA) 2004 empowers the Auditor General to audit all public sector
entities; ministries/departments; statutory authorities (OAG, 2003g; OAG, 2003l; OAG,
2004i; OAG, 2005h); government commercial entities (OAG, 2003a, pp. 68-87);
municipal councils (OAG, 2003h; OAG, 2004g; OAG, 2005g); and provincial councils
(OAG, 2003i; OAG, 2004h).
All public sector entities, with the exception of the Unit Trust of Fiji, have a 31
December financial year-end. The Constitution, Audit Act and FMA require the Auditor
General to submit audit reports of public sector entities to Parliament within 9 months of
the end of the financial year, and special investigation reports within 6 months of their
completion. Statutory authorities and provincial councils are placed with their line
ministries or where they obtain their budgets. Commercial government entities include
government commercial companies (GCC), commercial statutory authorities (CSA) and
agencies specified in the FMA as off-budget state entities (OBSE).
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Research design and methodology
In terms of the research design, data sources include OAG audit reports, public sector
entities’ annual reports as well as semi-structured interviews with public sector stakeholders.
The non-interview data was used as part of the triangulation process to provide evidence of
reporting performance of Fijian public sector entities. This entailed both textual analysis of
audit reports of the Whole of Government generated by the Office of the Auditor General
that were, tabled to parliament for the operational years covering 2001-2005, in order to
glean insights of the general terrain of reporting performance that might impact on individual
public sector entity reporting performances; descriptive statistical and ANOVA analysis of
the generation of annual reports prepared by five types of Fijian public sector entities over
the same time period; and semi-structured interview analysis of stakeholder observations of
reporting performance of public sector entities in Fiji.
Phase 1
Audit reports of the Whole of Government of the Fiji Islands’ accounts and finances that
were submitted to parliament covering the reporting performance of the Whole of
Government operations for the study period 2001-2005 were examined for commentary
on actual reporting generation issues. For each year, Reports of the Auditor General of
the Republic of the Fiji Islands would be submitted by the OAG by sector categories:
general administrative, economic, social services and infrastructure. For some years, the
OAG would produce special audit reports on specific public sector entities.
Phase 2
Annual reports of public sector entities that were submitted to parliament for 2001-2005
inclusive were also examined. The names of the sample of 150 public sector entities were
gleaned from the audit reports made by the Office of the Auditor General over the five-
year study period (OAG, 2001a; OAG, 2002a; OAG, 2003a; OAG, 2004a; OAG, 2005a;
OAG, 2006a) and the copies of the hard copy reports were gathered from the offices of
the individual public sector entity and the government printing office. The final sample
set comprised 54 ministries/departments; 38 statutory authorities; 33 commercial
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government entities, 12 municipal authorities; and 13 provincial councils. Using the
records of the OAG, the sample of 150 entities appeared to approximate the population of
Fijian public sector entities. Some of the names of the public entities changed over time
but, in accordance with the way the OAG was able to audit each of the 150 entities over
the five-year period, each entity’s reporting performance was able to be tracked over the
same period. A check list of all the annual reports submitted to parliament for the period
2003-2005 was gathered from The Report for the Legislative Department 2003-2005
(Legislative Department, 2006; Appendix V, pp. xx-xxvi) and a further check list of all
the annual reports submitted to parliament for the period 2001-2002 was gathered from
the Parliament of the Republic of Fiji Islands (Parliament House, 2004; Appendix 12, pp.
97-99).
Brown and Tower (2002) used six reporting criteria to assess PIC entities’ reporting
performance: the filing of a general purpose annual report; timeliness of the report; level
of aggregated disclosures; presence of core statement accounts; financial related
accounting disclosures; non-financial related accounting disclosures. However, they
found very low levels of filing (17%). The six criteria were used to scrutinize which of
three reporting models – Traditional, Western-narrow and Western-broad – caught the
basis of accounting for Pacific Island Countries’ entities. For the purposes of this paper’s
research question, a narrower focus is made to concentrate on Brown and Tower’s (2002)
criteria on filing, timing and core financial statements. This focus enables conclusions to
be made about a facet of reporting that takes into account the customary, political and
resource sensitivities of a developing country in what has now become to be known as
the Traditional Reporting milieu (Brown and Tower, 2002; Brown, Tower and Taplin,
2004a; 2004b). The other criteria used by Brown and Tower (2002) – level of aggregated
disclosures, financial related accounting disclosures and non-financial related accounting
disclosures – used in the past to assess a country’s reporting model falls outside the scope
of this study’s research question.
In terms of scoring, a public sector entity that tabled at least one annual report (no matter
how old the annual report submission) to parliament for a particular year received a score
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of ‘1’; an entity that did not submit a report to parliament received a score of ‘0’. For the
five-year study period, the scores for each of the five years were aggregated to determine
an aggregated score out of 5.
A weighted means of the generation of annual reports by public sector entities was
calculated taking into consideration the elements of filing, timeliness and core financial
statements. . Here, a score of ‘3’ represented a timely (tabled within one year of balance
date) annual report that included audited core-financial statements; a score of ’2’
represented a timely annual report that included unaudited core-financial statements; a
score of ‘1’represented a timely annual report without core-financial statements; and a
score of ‘0’ if the annual report was not submitted within a year. It was possible,
therefore, for an entity to secure a maximum score of 15 over the study period.
Phase 3
Semi-structured interviews of key respondents were used as part of a triangulation
research process to provide additional insights for Phases 1 and 2. Rather than a stand
alone phase, the findings of Phase 3 were included in the results section of both Phase 1
and 2. In contrast to the objectivist epistemologies and positivist–methodologies of
Phases 1 and 2, Phase 3 adopted an interpretivist research paradigm approach to
acknowledge and accept respondents’ interpretations of reality as an integral part of that
reality. Under the interpretivist world-view individual perspectives are valued and the
subjective experience and behaviour of the whole person, including the influences
brought to bear upon that behaviour by dynamic interaction with the situation or
environment, are considered important (O’Donoghue, 2007).
This approach is appropriate for Phase 3 of this study because the area of reasoning about
Fijian file reporting, timeliness and core financial statements is largely unexplored and
requires a deep small-scale research approach that allows for an exploration of how the
actions of report filing were interpreted. This phase is sensitive to the lived “realities” of
Fijian public sector stakeholders and how those realities are perceived by them and others
close to that process and how those perspectives changed over time. The interpretivist
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world-view is therefore suited to this phase because of both the context and the purpose
of this study. Also, the ontological and epistemological assumptions that are made in this
phase (that multiple realities exist and that data gathered during the study reflects both the
researcher’s and the research participants’ mutual constructions) are interpretivist
assumptions. The phase ultimately provides an interpretivist portrayal of the studied
world which supplements the positivist findings of Phases 1 and 2. It is important to note
that the overall aim of this phase was to generate additional insights from participant’s
experience in the public sector about the trends of the reporting performance of the Fijian
government entities over the period 2001 to 2005. The insights were not used to generate
new theory as in grounded theory.
Four respondents from the public sector were asked to explain the reasons for the
reporting performance of their government institution. The semi-structured interviews
were conducted in Suva, Fiji in October 2007. The respondents were drawn from senior
government levels, and were involved in planning, consultation, operations, accounting
and audit. The purpose of interviewing these respondents was to understand some of the
terrain of government accounting in Fiji. The semi-structured interviews were designed to
provide background information about the interviewees’ attitudes towards government
accounting. Information was also collected on factors influencing public accounting’s
current form, and its perceived usefulness to parliamentarians and stakeholders.
The following three interrelated guiding questions were developed from the central
research aim:
Guiding question 1: What trends or patterns, if any, did respondents detect in
the reporting performance of the Fijian pubic sector over the period 2001 to
2005?
Guiding question 2: What factors do respondents identify as assisting or
hampering public sector entities’ ability to generate annual reports in this
time period?
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Guiding question 3: How do respondents explain the past and present lack of
reporting by Fijian government entities?
O’Donoghue (2007) argues that in an interpretivist study the issues which are
germane are those which are issues for the participants being investigated, rather
than those which might exist from the outset as problems in the mind of the
researcher. It was with this in mind that the guiding questions changed slightly
during the research project. An earlier version of the second guiding question sought
to investigate whether respondents were helped or hampered in generating annual
reports in their jobs but this path of inquiry changed when it became clear that while
all the respondents in the study considered the role of reporting to be vital to
accountability, the real issues that were of concern were far more immediate and
centred around surviving their days in their respective reporting role. As a result, the
second guiding question changed to one about ‘reporting survival’ when it became
clear that this was the process that most concerned respondents in ‘their time’ in the
reporting role.
Prior to interviews, a signed ethics form from the author’s university was needed to
undertake research as the research itself was deemed ‘minimal risk’- the level of risk
accepted in everyday life. In accordance with the ethics form, the author took care that
recruitment of participants did not involve coercion. Participation was voluntary and the
researcher had authorised access to the contact details of participants in accordance with
the NHMRC National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans
(2007). Respondent-participants signed a consent form and were given an information
sheet. Participation was completely anonymous, with no personal details recorded. The
length of the interviews lasted an average length of 60 min. For reasons of cultural
sensitivity, interviews were not taped, but each respondent-participant gave the researcher
permission to take notes. These hand-written notes were later transcribed.
Four interviews were conducted with respondents on the issue of reporting performance
of the Fijian public sector: Respondent 1, a retired senior army officer and senior
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permanent secretary with extensive and wide-ranging senior departmental ministerial
experience both before and during some of the study period under consideration;
Respondent 2, a middle-management officer with one of the government departments
during the study period. As revealed in the discussion of the results that follow, both
Respondents 1 and 2 offered substantial insights about Phase 1 of the project.
Respondent 3 was a senior executive officer in a commercial government entity that
successfully produced unqualified annual reports before, during and after the time period
in question, and Respondent 4 was a senior level accountant of a municipal government
entity. Both these respondents presented keen insights into Phase 2 of the project.
Discussion of results
The results of the reporting performance of Fiji public sector entities are presented in
three phases. Phase 1 provides a backdrop to the reporting performance of Fijian public
sector entities by examining the OAG’s analysis of reporting by the Whole of
Government. Phase 2 provides an analysis of the output of annual reports by five types of
public sector entities, and Phase 3 reveals the responses of four semi-structured
interviews on the topic of public sector reporting, which are incorporated in the
discussion of Phases 1 and 2.
Phase 1 Whole of Government accounts
For each of the years covering the period 2001-2005, the OAG tabled to parliament audit
reports of the Whole of Government accounts on a timely basis. Although the Whole of
Government’s 2001 accounts were unqualified and deemed faithfully and properly kept
(OAG, 2002a; OAG, 2002b; OAG, 2002c; OAG, 2002d; OAG, 2002e; OAG, 2002f;
OAG, 2002g), the OAG found enormous problems in the Whole of Government’s
general ledger system which impeded the generation of annual reports by individual
public sector entities to the extent that annual reports for most of the ministries and
departments were not submitted to the Public Service Commission for tabling before
Parliament (OAG, 2002b):
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There is an urgent need for the Ministry of Finance to change its General Ledger System as early as 2003 to ensure that reliable and credible accounting information is produced. The continuing delay the government has made its compilation and the audit of the Accounts and Finance of government a very complicated process (OAG, 2002a; p. v).
The Whole of Government’s 2002 accounts were also unqualified (OAG, 2003a; OAG,
2003b; OAG, 2003c; OAG, 2003d; OAG, 2003e; OAG, 2003f; OAG, 2003g; OAG,
2003h; OAG, 2003i; OAG, 2003j; OAG, 2003k) with the OAG (2003a) again
emphasising that the Ministry of Finance and other ministries and departments had not
maintained their ledgers satisfactorily due to breakdowns of the general ledger system.
As a result, the ledgers have been riddled with errors and expenditures have been charged haphazardly to the accounts. Numerous misallocations were noted and corrected during the course of the audit while some were too late to be adjusted (OAG, 2003a, p. i)
The following year, the Whole of Government 2003 accounts were qualified (OAG,
2004a; OAG, 2004b; OAG, 2004c; OAG, 2004d; OAG, 2004e; OAG, 2004f). An amount
of $48,469,250 in respect of trust moneys was not appropriately supported by Cash at
Bank (OAG, 2004a) and the inability by Ministry of Finance to furnish satisfactory
explanations on balances of four accounts totalling $12,467,187 reflected as Unpresented
Cheques in Appendix 3: Statement of Cash and Bank Balance of the Accounts and
Finance Report (OAG, 2004a).
The 2004 Whole of Government accounts were also qualified (OAG, 2005a; OAG,
2005b; OAG, 2005c; OAG, 2005d; OAG, 2005e; OAG, 2005f; OAG, 2005g; OAG,
2005h; OAG, 2005i; OAG, 2005j) because the Consolidated Trust Fund, amounting to
$50,339,342, again not being supported by Cash at Bank and because of a lack of
substantiation of the correctness of income tax and VAT revenues totalling $727.9
million collected by the Fiji Islands Revenue & Customs Authority (FIRCA)
(representing 45% of the Government’s total revenue in 2004).
Yet again, the OAG (2005a) noted that most ministries and departments did not maintain
ledgers of their own and relied solely on the general ledger system maintained by the
Ministry of Finance.
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It is therefore necessary for Ministries and Departments to continue to maintain their own ledgers to ensure that their accounts are produced on time. The monthly reconciliations should attempt to resolve any differences in their own ledgers and the Ministry of Finance ledgers. The inadequate General Ledger system resulted in numerous cases of mispostings and audit could not establish whether the Ministry of Finance or the Ministries and Departments were directly responsible. These incorrect entries are then too late to be adjusted and carried over the years. There were some instances of balances that were carried over in the accounts from the reduction of the number of bank accounts from 6 to 2 which resulted in a lot of wrong entries in the accounts. The Ministry of Finance did not take measures to ensure that entries relating to the bank accounts were properly closed for each fund before the changeover (OAG, 2005a, p. iv).
The OAG (2005a) also suggested that the poor record-keeping by ministries and
departments warranted legislative changes.
The maintenance of records continues to be a problem. Despite the prevalence of the issue in last years report, there does not seem to be any improvements. Unless legislation and regulations are put in place to strengthen laws governing improper recordkeeping, and which specifies penalties for improper recordkeeping or missing records, Ministries and Departments will not improve this important aspect of their work and those directly involved will not be obliged to be responsible for the proper maintenance of records (OAG, 2005a).
For the final year of the time period of the study, the Whole of Government 2005
accounts were again qualified (OAG, 2006a; OAG, 2006b; OAG, 2006c; OAG, 2006d;
OAG, 2006e; OAG, 2006f). Again, trust money had not been accounted for separately
from public money and had not been kept in a separate bank account contrary to section
25 of the FMA (2004); an amount of $48,424,397 in respect of trust money was not
supported by cash at bank. FIRCA had for the second year denied the Office of the
Auditor General access to taxpayer records. The correctness of the income and company
taxes and VAT revenues collected by FIRCA in the Whole of Government financial
statements therefore could not be verified. And again, the Ministry of Finance records
and ledgers on which the Whole of Government financial statements were prepared did
not reconcile with the various ministries/departments ledger balances for the year ended
31 December 2005.
It would appear, therefore, that a distinct pattern of reporting emerges for the Whole of
Government of Fiji. In the first two years of the study period (2001-2002) the Whole of
Government had unqualified accounts but with matters that required attention,
particularly the general ledger system. In the following three years (2003-2005), the
Whole of Government generated qualified accounts, not only due to the break down of
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the general ledger system but also to unaccounted trust funds and unverified tax
collections. Against this reporting backdrop, all the OAG audit reports for the study
period provided examples of missing funds, inadequate internal control systems and poor
debt collection systems across all types of public sector entities.
Additional insights were provided by Respondents 1 and 2 for the interview phase.
Respondent 1 was well aware of the reporting difficulties of the Fijian public sector
entities between the years 2001-2005, having worked for many ministries and
departments at senior levels both before and during the study period. According to
Respondent 1, there was an historical basis for the lack of annual reports generated by the
public service entities that stemmed from both a lack of leadership and discipline by
indigenous Fijians. Democracy, according to Respondent 1, came far too early for Fijian
indigenous people with the abolition, in 1967, of the Fijian Regulation. The removal of
the Fijian Regulation meant that leadership of the Great Council of Chiefs and provincial
and village chieftainships were weakened immediately which, in turn, destroyed
“traditional village democracy” and “smashed protocols”. “Commoners” rather than
“chiefs in their own right” got to power without the “traditional ideals of leadership”
which considered the social fabric of all people, in particular ensuring that every villager
would have the skills of planting root crops, vegetables and fruit trees, as well as
maintaining food security and health, good peers, stable sources of counsel, adequate
schooling, and a home. The breakdown of “traditional leadership” also meant that many
young indigenous Fijians were leaving the islands, residing in squatters’ settlements, and
confronting “all the social problems of squatter settlements: broken marriages, no good
peers, no stable source of counsel, leaving school early, leaving home ...”
The weakening of traditional patterns of leadership meant that commoners, without the
ideals of traditional support for their fellow inhabitants, were able to reach relatively high
positions both in the military and public service without the commitment to service that
previous generations of leaders may have been instilled with. This lack of service led to
inadequate preparation of the reporting that was needed by public sector entities. One
solution to overcome the problem of “poor” accounting leadership, according to
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Brown/FRRaG (Financial Reporting, Regulation and Governance) 2009 8:1
Respondent 3, was to encourage youngsters to join the military and improve their
leadership skills which could then be used later on in the public service.
Respondent 2 also believed that there was a lack of discipline and leadership amongst
Fijians but that this was not confined to indigenous Fijians. Many Indo-Fijians who had
senior posts in public sector entities were not considered “leadership material” by
indigenous Fijians working at relatively less senior levels who thus became “wary of
them”. A lack of respect for public sector leaders and a fear of the Auditor General’s
Office meant that the attitude towards reporting was based on a “culture of fear” and
“low self-esteem at work”. There was no motivation at lower levels of management to
report. Annual reports were really the domain of middle managers who were generally
“inexperienced and unqualified”. There was a lot of “management laxity”, “no
motivation at lower levels” and “no targets” in ensuring timely annual reports were
produced
Phase 2 Annual Reports
One–way ANOVA tests were constructed to evaluate whether there were any statistical
differences in the means of the generation of annual reports (unweighted) across the
categorical variable of public sector entity type. Table 2 below shows the results of
annual reports tabled to parliament by five Fijian public sector entity types
(ministries/departments; statutory authorities; commercial government entities; municipal
councils; and provincial councils) over the period 2001-2005. As indicated in Table 1,
there was a highly significant difference (p-value 0.000) for the mean of annual report
generation across public sector entity types.
Municipal councils generated most annual reports over the five-year period (a mean of
2.58 annual reports over five years), but not one provincial council presented an annual
report to parliament at all over the same time period. There was also a low level of annual
report production by statutory authorities with less than one annual report (mean of 0.79)
produced over the five-year period. The means for ministries/departments (mean of 1.81)
and commercial government bodies (mean of 1.88) were almost identical. The overall
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Brown/FRRaG (Financial Reporting, Regulation and Governance) 2009 8:1
mean of 1.43 annual reports for all 150 public sector entities suggests there were
difficulties in generating annual reports in the time period. It should also be noted that
many public sector entities produced very late annual reports.
Table 1: Comparison of unweighted means of generation of annual reports by public sector entity type 2001-2005
N Entity means Standard Deviation
ANOVA
F Sig. (p-value) Five public sector entity types: 1. Ministries/Departments 54 1.81 1.73 2. Statutory Authorities 38 0.79 1.23 3. Commercial government entities 33 1.88 1.69 4. Municipal Councils 12 2.58 1.24 5. Provincial Councils 13 0.00 0.00 Total 150 1.43 1.63 8.139 0.000
Legend: R Square .183 Adjusted R-Square .161
One–way ANOVA tests were also constructed to evaluate whether there was any
statistical differences in means of the generation of annual reports (weighted) across the
categorical variable of public sector entity type. Table 2 below shows the results of
annual reports (weighted) tabled to parliament by the five Fijian public sector entity types
(ministries/departments; statutory authorities; commercially run state enterprises;
municipal councils; and provincial councils) over the period 2001-2005. Table 2 shows
there was a highly significant difference (p-value 0.000) for the mean of annual report
generation across the public sector entity types.
Again, municipal councils had the highest mean of (weighted) annual reports over the
five-year period (a weighted mean score of 10.33 over five years); provincial councils
had the lowest mean (0.00) over the same time period. There was a low level of weighted
annual report production by statutory authorities (mean of 3.68) over the five-year period.
The weighted mean for ministries/departments (mean of 4.19) was much lower than for
commercial government bodies (mean of 8.21). The overall mean of 5.07 annual reports
for all 150 public sector entities suggests there were difficulties in generating annual
reports that included core financial statements and that were timely.
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Brown/FRRaG (Financial Reporting, Regulation and Governance) 2009 8:1
Table 2: Comparison of weighted means of generation of annual reports by public sector entity type 2001-2005
N Entity means Standard Deviation
ANOVA
F Sig. (p-value) Five public sector entity types: 1. Ministries/Departments 54 4.19 4.91 2. Statutory Authorities 38 3.68 5.99 3. Commercial government entities 33 8.21 8.41 4. Municipal Councils 12 10.33 5.28 5. Provincial Councils 13 0.00 0.00 Total 150 5.07 6.49 7.766 0.000
Legend: R Square .176 Adjusted R-Square .154
In explaining why there was a difference in reporting level between the five groups of the
public sector entities, findings from Phase 3 of this study provided important insights.
Respondent 3 did not want to be drawn on the general reporting performance of Fiji’s
public sector entities over the period 2001-2006 – “perhaps they have a different set of
priorities” - but provided reasons for the reporting success of Respondent 3’s institution
(with a relatively high mean for annual report generation) in a group that had a relatively
much lower mean for annual report generation. Respondent 3 said that the accounting
staff knew the deadline for meeting the annual report submission to be tabled to
parliament and then worked backwards to ensure they met the deadlines for the
intermediate steps towards annual report completion. There was never a question of the
institution not completing an annual report on time. Respondent 3’s institution had
regularly been nominated for best public sector annual report award run by the South
Pacific Stock Exchange. Although this was not considered as critical, it was “nice” to be
recognized as the best preparer of public sector annual reports amongst the reporting
community.
Voluntarily, Respondent 3’s institution placed its annual reports and quarterly reports on
the web site in order to facilitate offsite monitoring. Respondent 3 thought this was very
important because by opening up the institution’s reporting to the world at large, it
received constructive feedback on how to improve its reporting. Indeed, Respondent 3
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Brown/FRRaG (Financial Reporting, Regulation and Governance) 2009 8:1
provided examples of how other institutions provided key online disclosure statements on
the web in the form of a three-page template showing profitability, asset quality, credit
exposure concentrations and exposures, summarized balance sheet and income statement,
and independent audit report. This was done so that customers and potential customers
could not only gather information about the institution’s financial condition but could
also differentiate the performance of regulated financial institutions from unregulated
ones.
The staff within Respondent 3’s entity had strong accounting backgrounds both in terms
of academic qualifications (University of South Pacific accounting and commerce
degrees and sometimes postgraduate degrees from overseas) and links with the Fiji
Institute of Accountants and overseas Big 4 accountants based in Suva. Respondent 3’s
institution saw New Zealand’s approach to public sector reporting as “the leading light in
the field” and wanted to emulate it. It also wanted to ensure it was IFRS-compliant. There
was a sense that international perceptions were important to Respondent 3 and that it was
important for this Fijian institution to remain the “reporting leader” of the Pacific Island
Countries.
Respondent 4 said his institution’s late tabling of the annual report to parliament arose
because of the heavy workload of the Office of the Auditor General which was deluged
with auditing of most public sector entities. According to Respondent 4, it might take the
OAG about two years to audit the financial statements, and there was a perception that
the qualified opinions were based on opinions that were outside the experience of the
OAG. In addition, the late tabling to parliament could also be put down to the
parliamentary process being slowed down by the after-effects of the 2000 coup.
Conclusion
As always there are inherent assumptions and limitations embedded in a study such as
this. The paper assumes the annual report is a relevant form of mass communication
accessible to the general public. However, there are impediments in accessing the reports;
Fijian public sector entities are unlikely to hold large stock piles of reports for a non-
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English speaking stakeholder readership (English is the official business language, but
many Fijian stakeholders may only be able to read or speak Fijian) and while it is
possible to purchase copies of available reports at the government printing office, the sum
required may fall outside the means of many Fijian stakeholders. Nevertheless, the annual
report represents one of the few disclosure vehicles offering summarized, relevant
information about public sector entities that can be accessed should the information in
English be needed.
Additionally, although the names of municipal councils and provincial councils did not
change over the five-year period of study, the names of some of the
ministries/departments, statutory authorities and commercial government entities did
because of slight differences in portfolios over the years. Despite minor changes in
portfolios, each of these entities retained their core activities over the five years of the
study period. This assumption was in accord with the OAG, which in comparing and
contrasting their audit performances of these entities over the 2001-2005 period also
assumed that each entity retained its core activities.
Despite the above assumptions and limitations, the results of the study showed that the
OAG audit reports for the Whole of Government accounts across the five-year study
period (2001-2005) showed Fiji’s public sector was beset by reporting difficulties. The
Whole of Government of Fiji Islands accounts from the period from 2003-2005 were
qualified. The breakdown in the general ledger system, which was also recognized in the
OAG audit reports of the unqualified years of 2001-2002 seems to have arisen from a
break down in procedures and processes, a lack of accounting expertise, and a reliance on
the Ministry of Finance’s systems rather than from a lack of financial resources. The
Ministry of Finance itself rarely produced an annual report.
Most public sector entities did not table annual reports to parliament over the 2001-2005
period on a timely basis, and many annual reports which were generated did not contain
core financial statements or were qualified. Not one provincial council produced an
annual report over the five-year period and statutory authorities, which produced, on
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average, less than one annual report over the entire time period, appear to fill the
Traditional reporting tag. Insights from interviews suggested that the lack of reporting
may have resulted from a lack of leadership or discipline.
There were certain types of public sector entities that produced relatively more annual
reports over the five-year time period and clearly exceeded the overall mean. In the
unweighted measure of annual report production, municipal councils generated the most
annual reports over the five-year period. However, nearly all municipal council reports
were qualified. In the weighted measure of tabling annual reports, municipal councils
secured the highest mean generation of reports with commercial government entities
securing the second highest mean. Some of these latter entities, including government
commercial companies (GCC), commercial statutory authorities (CSA) and off-budget
statutory entities (OBSE), tabled annual reports to parliament replete with timely,
unqualified, independently audited financial statements.
It is unlikely that the reporting performance of public sector entities, by itself, triggered
impetus for the execution of the 2006 coup – although the leader of this fourth recent
coup, Bainimarama, the commander of the FMF, did state that one of the motivations was
that Fiji’s governance was “catastrophic” (Bainimarama, 2007) - but it is also unlikely
Fiji’s public sector reporting performance will be enhanced by the FMF given its past
reporting performance. During the 2001-2005 time period of the study, the FMF never
tabled an annual report to parliament.
What appears more likely to improve public sector reporting performance is both a return
to democracy and the will of parliament to legislate in more detail for timely audited
financial annual reports. The call for greater legislation has come from the OAG (2005a).
There also appears internal leadership skills within the Fijian reporting community that
could greatly bolster the reporting performance of public sector accounting. One level of
leader emanates from the OAG which has a vast Fijian experience in both auditing and
reporting (the OAG produced its own timely audited and unqualified annual reports
consistently over the five-year period). The OAG has suggested the introduction of an
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audit committee on each individual public sector entity. According to the OAG, the
primary role of audit committee is to improve financial reporting by overseeing the
financial reporting process, audit functions and internal controls. The OAG suggests that
the inclusion of some stakeholders from the private sector in such a committee would
strengthen and maintain an appropriate control culture (OAG, 2003).
Another leadership group rests in those Fijian public sector entities that consistently
produce timely annual reports. Respondents 1 and 2 of the semi-structured interview
phase lamented the lack of leadership in the Fiji Islands but responses from Respondent 3
suggests that a culture of meeting annual report deadlines, understanding and taking up
local and external community expectations, embracing online technologies and hiring
locally qualified accounting staff would appear to offer the necessary leadership qualities
to help boost generation of annual reports. Clearly, future research might further explore
this nexus between improved leadership and improved annual report generation.
Further research might also consider gleaning further insights from a greater array of
stakeholders about the reporting trends of Fijian public sector entities for the period after
the fourth coup which has witnessed many changes in senior government posts under
military rule, the fragility of parliamentary rule, the circumspectness of foreign
investment, the condemnation of the international community and the depreciation of the
Fijian dollar. Further research might also focus on the stakeholder perceptions of the lack
of reporting by the Fijian government, particularly from rural outposts where many
islanders and villagers rely on timely reporting to make key decisions.
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OAG. (2005c). Volume 2 Part II: General Administration Sector - 2004, Report of the Auditor General of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, August, Parliamentary Paper No. 70 of 2005.
OAG. (2005d). Volume 3: Social Services Sector - 2004, Report of the Auditor General of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, August, Parliamentary Paper No. 71 of 2005.
OAG. (2005e). Volume 4: Economic Services Sector - 2004, Report of the Auditor General of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, August, Parliamentary Paper No. 72 of 2004.
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OAG. (2006a). Volume 1: Whole of Government Financial Statements & Annual Appropriation Statement - 2005, Report of the Auditor General of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, September, Parliamentary Paper No. 75 of 2006.
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OAG. (2006c). Volume 2 Part II: Report on the General Administration Sector - 2005, Report of the Auditor General of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, September, Parliamentary Paper No. 77 of 2006.
OAG. (2006d). Volume 3: Social Services Sector - 2005, Report of the Auditor General of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, September, Parliamentary Paper No. 78 of 2006.
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