By Arret Jatta
The governor of the Central Bank of The Gambia (CBG) has refuted claims that the bank has prevented the National Audit Office (NAO) from looking at its books.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Buah Saidy said since its inception NAO has never audited the central bank and instead, contracts the audit to external companies such as DT and PKF, due to capacity constraints.
He explained: “The National Audit Office is empowered to audit every government-owned institution in the country. The government is the single shareholder in the Central Bank and that’s why we pay dividend only to government. But because of capacity constraints at the National Audit Office, it contracts the audit of the central bank to the Big Four (the four largest professional accounting services networks in the world: Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC). Those that are present in The Gambia are DT and KPMG,” the governor explained.
He added that the audit reports are submitted to the NAO, and that the CBG has not prevented the NAO from auditing the bank. “There is no way that we will prevent the National Audit Office from auditing the Central Bank. When they contract those two companies, they rotate because they don’t want a causal relationship to stay with one company.”
The governor emphasised that the CBG is transparent and accountable, and that the interim audit for 2025 has already started.
“The audits for 2025, the interim audit, have started. They met with my directors here and that process is going on. So this nonsense going around that central bank refused for the National Audit Office to audit them is not true and I want you guys to correct that nonsense,” he said.
