Annex 4: Information for New, Disestablished or Restructured Agencies
Newly established entities [section 45I of the PFA]
The Minister of Finance may exempt an entity that is established within four months of the end of the financial year from the obligation to provide an annual report for that financial year. However, if this occurs:
- if the entity administers an appropriation it must, as soon as practical after the end of the financial year, provide a statement of actual expenses and capital expenditure against appropriations, a statement of any unappropriated expenses and capital expenditure, and an audit report on those statements, and
- the entity must, as soon as practicable after the end of the next financial year, provide an annual report that covers the period from the date on which it was established until the end of that next financial year.
Final annual report for disestablished entities [section 45J of the PFA]
A department that is disestablished prior to the end of a financial year must, as soon as practicable after the date on which it is disestablished, provide a final report (as if the final report were an annual report) for the period up until that date.
The Minister of Finance may approve the transfer of some or all of the responsibility for completing a final report to another party. If this occurs, the party who assumes responsibility must sign the statement of responsibility.
A department that is disestablished has an extra 20 working days to provide its final report and have it audited (except that the start of the period is the date the department is disestablished, not the end of the financial year). So, if the department was disestablished on 31 March, it would need to have provided the relevant information to the Auditor-General by around 28 June, and with the audit report due by 28 July, and with 15 further working days to present the final report to the House.
Transferred operations [section 45L of the PFA]
The Minister of Finance may exempt a department being disestablished, and whose operations are transferred to another department during the financial year, from the requirement to include a statement of service performance and a full report on its operations in its final report. If granted, the information for the period up to the point of transfer must instead be included in the annual report of the department the operations were transferred to.
Departments that might wish to seek an exemption or transfer of responsibility under any of these sections are advised to contact their Treasury vote team or performanceinfo@treasury.govt.nz.
