This means that the province is complying with the requirements of the Public Finance Management Act, which regulates government's financial control systems.

 Premier Mbhazima Shilowa said the administration remained the leading province in implementing the act, and this made possible the establishment of measurable objectives and outcomes with a focus on outputs as opposed to inputs.

"Our challenge now is to maintain the high-performance standards that we have set for ourselves, and spend all the money in accordance with the programmes that we have developed to improve the lives of the people of Gauteng," he said.

 Shilowa said the province had planned to achieve the qualification as it was part of its delivery strategy to account for every cent spent.

 A gratified deputy director-general for the provincial treasury, Pradeep Maharaj, said: "This took a lot of work for all those involved."

 Shilowa said that the administration had made the improvements because it had taken note of the comments and suggestions made by the auditor-general and the legislature in the previous years.

 When the annual reports for the 2001-02 fiscal year were tabled in the legislature last year not one department received a disclaimer from the auditor-general on its financial statement.

 While there was remarkable improvement, the auditor-general gave qualified opinions on some of the departments.

 This meant that there were still some areas in their finances which the auditor-general felt needed tightening, he said.

 "This was indeed a remarkable improvement from the previous years when the auditor-general, due to a variety of reasons, was unable to make an opinion on the financial statements of some of our departments," Shilowa said.

Source: Business Day