The Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda (ICPAU) is launching a course for performance auditors, especially in government projects.
Performance Auditors are mainly attached to the Office of the Auditor General and their duty of to scrutinize how a particular project has been handled, from procurement, through implementation to monitoring and evaluation.
Currently, the role is being done by persons who only learn what to do on the job, with some even not being qualified auditors, and therefore not regulated by anyone.
The Performance Audit Course is adapted from the English Speaking chapter of the African Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (AFROSAI-E) a membership organization that currently has 26 African countries as members including Uganda.
John Bosco Ntangaare, the Director of Education at ICPAU, says this will help improve project performance and realize value for money.
He was speaking on Wednesday at the release of the ICPAU examination results, for the last diet of 2023 sat in November, which registered some improvement in overall performance, though not satisfactory, according to the institute.
The courses examined were the Accounting Technicians Diploma (ATD), Certified Tax Advisor (CTA), and Certified Public Accountancy (CPA), featuring a total of 6,223 candidates.
The ATD average pass rate was 51.2 percent, compared to the previous (May) sitting where the pass rate was 43.5 percent.
The average pass rate from CPA also improved from 32.6 to 38.5 percent, while the CTA candidates performed worst with a 36.2 rate though it was a big improvement from 26.7 percent in May.
ICPAU said they are launching an investigation into what the causes of the high failure rates are, apart from what the examiners say like lack of adequate preparation and failure to interpret questions.
One of the remedies they are due to introduce is a Master class for the instructors to improve their teaching skills.
Ronald Mutumba, the Vice President of ICPAU said that currently, the people teaching the accountancy students are largely accountancy professionals and not teachers.
ICPAU also welcomed the move by the government to transfer the ATD Course examination from the Institute to the Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (UBTEB) this year.
ICPAU will examine the continuing students for the next two years before UBTED makes the complete takeover, according to the Public Accountants Examinations Board (PAEB).
PAEB Chairperson Prof Laura Orobia said that even after UBTEB takes over the examination function, the students will continue being exempted from the first level as they join CPA.
There was concern that this could affect the ADT product quality. However, Mutumba assures that this will instead be the opposite because UBTEB has many partners in the form of certificate and diploma training institutions.
