Irregular Expenditure (IFW)

Irregular, fruitless and wasteful, and unauthorised expenditure — IFW — is the headline number in every AGSA report and the most politically charged figure in public finance. The MFMA s.32 and PFMA s.81 require every such transaction to be recorded, investigated, classified and resolved through condonation, recovery or write-off. It is not enough to disclose the amount; the law requires the entity to do something about each rand of it.

The damage from poor IFW handling is cumulative. An entity that logs irregular expenditure but never investigates, never determines recoverability, and never reconciles the register to its AFS disclosure note carries a growing, unresolved balance that AGSA flags year after year — and the absence of consequence management beneath it signals the impunity that produces still more irregular expenditure next year.

A disciplined IFW register breaks that accumulation. Every transaction is captured at identification, investigated to determine recoverability, and routed through recovery, condonation or write-off — then reconciled quarterly to the AFS IFW disclosure notes. Each entry can open a consequence-management case, so the number is not just disclosed but actively driven down.