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AGSA: 2024-25 PFMA General Report
- 17 April 2026
- Miscellaneous
- South African Accounting Academy
Summary:
The Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) has released the 2024-25 Consolidated General Report on National and Provincial departments, public entities and legislatures - with a discussion of audit outcomes.
Article:
This report reflects on the overall audit outcomes of national and provincial government and legislatures in the first year of the 7th administration. It includes the AGSA’s observations and insights from the audits of the financial year that ended on 31 December 2024 for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges and 31 March 2025 for departments, public entities and legislatures. The cut-off date for inclusion of audit outcomes in this report was 15 September 2025.
Only 151 out of 417 auditees achieved unqualified audit outcomes with no other matters (popularly known as clean audits). This is a concerning trend as the national audit office had called on the 7th administration to build on the improved audit outcomes delivered by the previous (6th) administration. However, there is no noticeable shift towards better performance – not in financial management and not in service delivery.
The following areas of concern were identified:
- Audit outcomes which include: regressions, limited clean audits and complacency
- Persistent and pervasive non-compliance with legislation
- Non-compliance and high levels of irregular expenditure in procurement and contract management
- Poor financial reporting, discipline and quality of spending, with focus on:
- Poor quality of spending
- Fruitless and wasteful expenditure
- Key weaknesses in financial performance
- State-owned enterprises continue to pose major risk to the country’s fiscal health
- Persistent delays and systemic failures in infrastructure delivery and maintenance
- Chronic delays and systemic project failures in human settlements
- Accountability and consequence management: a critical weakness
- Impact of the MI process
In conclusion, Root causes of governance lapses and Recommendations are summarised.
The Auditor-General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke has called on the government to double its efforts to improve its audit outcomes as the rate to address institutional capability, governance and accountability weaknesses is too slow.
Read the report for insights on the status of national and provincial government.
Additional Annexures in Excel-format can be accessed at https://www.agsa.co.za/Reporting/PFMAReports/PFMA2024-25.aspx:
- Annexure A: Audit outcomes
- Annexure 2: Financial health, SCM and root causes
- Annexure 3: Five(5) years audit opinions
- Annexure 4: Key controls
- Annexure 5: High-impact auditees
Access the media release at https://www.agsa.co.za/Portals/0/Reports/PFMA/2024-25/2024-25%20National%20and%20Provincial%20government%20Media%20Release%2026%20March%202026.pdf
Click here to download the 280-page PFMA Report:
Relevance to Auditors, Independent Reviewers & Accountants:
- The PFMA is yet another piece of legislation that your relevant national and provincial departmental clients must comply with, and which you must assess compliance with. If they don’t comply with the relevant laws and regulations, you have certain reporting obligations in terms of NOCLAR (NOn-Compliance with Laws And Regulations) – this could include reporting to management, qualifying your audit opinion, reporting a Reportable Irregularity, etc.
- As an audit firm perhaps performing audits on behalf of the AGSA, you need to be aware of the latest reports published by the AGSA.
- Only applicable to your clients in the National and Provincial departments, as well as public entities.
Relevance to Your clients:
- Only applicable to clients in the National and Provincial departments, as well as public entities.
- These clients should be aware of the latest reports published by the AGSA.