Auditor-General Dr Pamela Graham has told heads of about 7,000 public institutions to engage auditors early and back their answers with documents, as her office adopts technology-led, evidence-based audits.
Graham, who became Ghana’s first female Auditor-General in July, gave the warning at the launch of the 2026 financial year audit in Accra on 29 September. Her office is due this month to put an Audit Recommendations Tracker on its website, letting Parliament and the public see whether institutions act on audit findings. About GH¢280.5 million in surcharges imposed on officials remained unpaid as of February 2026.
In an interview on the sidelines of the launch, Graham said institutional leaders should meet audit teams at the start of each engagement, make time to hear emerging findings and respond with evidence. Early engagement, she said, would help the service finish on schedule, publish reports on time and reflect institutions’ responses properly. “There is going to be more vigilance,” she said.
The service will rely more on technology. Where data allows, auditors will examine entire populations of transactions rather than limited samples, and they will run interim audits at selected institutions to catch problems before they build up into prior-year adjustments. The 2026 cycle rests on five pillars: continuous engagement, timeliness, technology, people and impact.
Graham said tougher auditing alone would not end irregularities, because institutions are run by people and leave room for both honest mistakes and deliberate alteration of figures. She urged her own auditors to stay independent and not let their professional judgment be compromised, and said those responsible for irregularities also needed a change of mindset before infractions would fall significantly.
She has pledged to use her constitutional powers to disallow unlawful spending and surcharge the officials responsible. Since 2022, about GH¢57.2 million has been collected through the Auditor-General’s recovery account. The service says its work has recovered GH¢17.6 billion and prevented about GH¢11.7 billion in wrongful payments.
Graham also defended the service against criticism of its numbers. Under the Audit Service Act, 2000 (Act 584), the service is itself a public institution open to scrutiny, she said, but differences between figures from different bodies are not automatically errors. Results can vary with the terms of an engagement, the audit period and the accounting basis. Under International Public Sector Accounting Standards, she said, cash-basis and accrual-basis accounting can produce different numbers from the same transactions. She urged the media to report findings accurately.
Professor Francis Dodoo, the Presidential Advisor on the National Anti-Corruption Programme, who chaired the launch, repeated his estimate that Ghana lost GH¢100 billion to financial irregularities over six years and asked the service for comparable figures for 2025. He also urged it to set surcharge rates above the returns misappropriated money could earn in the market.
The Constitution requires the Auditor-General to report to Parliament within six months of the end of each financial year. The service audits more than 7,000 institutions a year and sent 21 reports to Parliament last year.
