Audit Service Commission’s 63% staff vacancy raises questions over state audit capacity for SOEs

• Auditor General’s report flags 30 vacant posts, or 63% of approved cadre, as at 31 December 2025; Commission’s own cadre table shows a lower 27 vacancies (56%)
• Six of ten senior-level posts empty, including Internal Auditor and Legal Officer; commission depends on retired officers on contract
• Shortfall surfaces as IMF-backed reforms widen Auditor General’s powers and Fund pushes for faster state enterprise reform

By Nishel Fernando

The Audit Service Commission is contending with an acute staffing shortfall that could weigh on Sri Lanka’s audit oversight of state-owned enterprises, with the Auditor General’s own observations, embedded within the Commission’s 2025 performance report, flagging a vacancy rate of 63 percent as at 31 December 2025, equivalent to 30 of its 48 approved posts. 

The commission’s own cadre management table, presented separately in the same report, records a marginally lower count of 27 vacancies, or 56 percent, pointing to a three-post discrepancy at secondary level between the institution’s self-reported staffing position and the Auditor General’s independent tally.

The shortage is most acute at senior management level, where six of ten approved positions remain vacant, including the Assistant Director, both Assistant Secretary posts, the Accountant, the Internal Auditor and the Legal Officer. The Commission acknowledged in its report that carrying out its functions without the minimum required staff could hinder the efficient execution of work and adversely affect the transparency, accuracy and quality of its operations, and said it had turned to retired officers engaged on a contract basis to keep routine functions running.

The Auditor General’s observations point to further strain from the staffing gap. The commission had planned 30 training programmes for its staff for 2025 under its human resource development plan, but 25 of these were not held. Separately, only two of the four Audit and Management Committee meetings required annually under Department of Management Audit guidelines were convened during the year.

The staffing gap is not a new concern for Sri Lanka’s audit architecture. The International Monetary Fund’s 2023 Governance Diagnostic Assessment, conducted under the Extended Fund Facility programme, noted that the commission’s own institutional history, having been abolished under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution in 2020 and reinstated under the 21st Amendment in 2022, had fed recurring concerns about the National Audit Office’s ability to audit all state authorities and follow up on its findings. The same assessment found the link between auditing and accountability too weak, since the Auditor General was legally constrained from sharing information on suspected fraud with law enforcement in real time.

Sri Lanka has since moved to close part of that gap. The National Audit (Amendment) Act, No. 19 of 2025, certified in September 2025 as an IMF-linked reform, empowers the Auditor General to refer suspected fraud, corruption or misappropriation directly to law enforcement, establishes a new Surcharge Review Committee to decide on penalties the Auditor General recommends, and increases punishments for offences under the National Audit Act. The reform extends the Auditor General’s reach at the same time as the Commission responsible for recruiting and disciplining the audit service’s own officers is struggling to fill its ranks.

The Audit Service Commission, established under Article 153A of the Constitution, holds exclusive authority over the recruitment, promotion, transfer and discipline of officers of the Sri Lanka State Audit Service, the cadre mandated to audit government departments, provincial councils, local authorities and state-owned enterprises. At the conclusion of its June 2026 mission ahead of the Extended Fund Facility’s seventh review, the IMF called for accelerating the reform of state-owned enterprises and reiterated that governance remains a cornerstone of the programme. 

IMF officials have separately said the Fund relies on Sri Lanka’s own institutions, rather than independent investigations, to verify compliance with reform commitments, a dependence that raises the stakes for the capacity of bodies such as the National Audit Office and the Commission that resources it.

The staffing crisis also comes amid a broader leadership transition. Samudika Jayarathna was sworn in as the 42nd Auditor General on 5 February 2026, becoming the first woman to hold the post, following a vacancy since April 2025 during which G.H.D. Dharmapala served in an acting capacity. Jayarathna also chairs the Audit Service Commission. Four newly appointed Commission members, former Auditor General Gamini Wijesinghe, former Deputy Auditor General G. Thevagnanan, retired Court of Appeal judge Nihal Sunil Rajapaksa and retired public officer Ratna Deshapriya, took the oath of secrecy before Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne on 4 May 2026.