FELICITY HAWKSLEY, journalist

In January 2021, the International Monetary Fund reported that the global fiscal response by governments to the coronavirus pandemic was US$14 trillion, and counting. Many countries have spent more than they take in taxes to try and get the pandemic under control.

And though both the financial crisis and covid19 warranted speedy spending, coronavirus spending has been spread across many more sectors and channels than the bank bailouts and quantitative easing during the credit crunch.

Clearly there are risks associated with such spending. "The main risks are fairly obvious," said Pamela Monroe Ellis FCCA, auditor general of Jamaica and secretary general of the Caribbean Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (CAROSAI). "The spending is generally taking place in an environment that is not conducive to checks and balances, and this has meant - in some cases - that there has been improper spending, corruption and irregularities.

"More likely than any of these is deprivation - the money is not going where it's needed most and has been redirected to persons of low priority. We have certainly seen that in some places with the vaccine rollout."

But Monroe Ellis agreed with enabling speedy spending. "Clearly a relaxing of controls is warranted," she said, "but we have to remember that once it has been spent, it can't be recovered."

Two solutions

In some countries two solutions are emerging to manage some of the risk involved in colossal and quick government spending. The first is on-time or real-time audit conducted by a country's supreme audit institution. The second, encouraged by the International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) is a transparency, accountability and inclusiveness (TAI) audit.

Monroe Ellis has first-hand experience of the former, since Jamaica's supreme audit institution conducted an on-time audit of its covid19 spending. "We know that one of the big risks is that supreme audit institutions are not equipped with either the financial or the human resources to respond with the speed in which the spend is taking place."

But Jamaica's supreme audit institution, which had already spent some years developing its technology environment and digitising processes, was able to transition to home-working without introducing high levels of risk. "My experience is that not many audit institutions can do this," Monroe Ellis said. "Among the 23 audit institutions in CAROSAI, only eight were able to work from home effectively, and of those eight, only one was able to conduct an on-time or real-time audit - and that was us."

Jamaica's on-time audit was conducted at the same time its government was developing the system for paying out funds to citizens and organisations. "We had high-level support from the finance minister," Monroe Ellis said, "and we had access to all the information we needed. The release of funds was conditional on the outcome of the audit, so there was a real incentive for the government to do their homework."

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