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Finance Minister tables Treasury Memorandum one month late

Jul 13, 2010 News

The long awaited Treasury Memorandum that has been stalled for more than a month now will be tabled in the National Assembly on Thursday coming and is expected to be circulated.
Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh will present to the House the document which is slated to outline what will be done as it relates to the breaches and irregularities that are outlined in the Auditor General and scrutinised by the Public Accounts Committee.
The Public Accounts Committee, upon receipt of an Auditor General’s Report, scrutinises it by having the head of the budget agencies along with its technical officers give answers to some of the identified breaches.
That committee then submits a report to the National Assembly documenting its findings. The Finance Minister then has 90 days to prepare a Treasury Memorandum which will speak to remedies and sanctions if any.
At present, the Public Accounts Committee is chaired by People’s National Congress Reform Member of Parliament, Volda Lawrence, of whom some have been critical of because she is not an economist.
The other members of the Committee include Shadow Finance Minister Winston Murray, Ernest Elliot, Indranie Chandarpal, Bibi Shadick, Komal Chand, Dharamkumar Seeraj, Harripersaud Nokta and David Patterson.
The committee advisors include the Auditor General (ag) Deodat Sharma; Finance Secretary Neermal Rekha and the Accountant General (ag) George Abrams.
A general trend in the reports of the committee includes: overpayments to contractors, breaches of tender board procedures, lack of maintenance of log books, non-compliance with the stipulated timeframe for the clearing of cheque orders, capital expenditure being met from current allocation, wrongful payments of salaries and consequential deductions paid to agencies, abuse of extra budgetary funds, variation of contracts and the high cost of maintaining vehicles among others.
There has been the criticism that the Audit Office Reports are weak and the Public Accounts Committee reports merely “waters it down.”
Chartered Accountant Christopher Ram had recently been critical of the Treasury Memorandums that have been proffered in recent times.
The Auditor General report has consistently pointed out the fact that the lotto funds are being managed in contravention of the laws of Guyana and two previous Treasury Memorandums namely the 2000/2001 and the 2002/2003 have both stated; “with respect to the concern about the proceeds from the Guyana Lotteries being held in a special bank account at the Bank of Guyana the Government has indicated previously that all sums going into and coming out of that account are properly accounted for.
In the 2002/2003 Treasury Memorandum, Dr Singh said that, “On the perceived abuse of the Contingencies Fund, the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act 2003 has sought to reinforce the requirements and procedures for accessing this Fund.”
The Minister promised that recourse to the Contingencies Fund, outside of an unforeseen circumstance will be obviated with strengthened public financial management.
Five years later, in the 2008 Auditor General report Sharma said, “The contingencies fund continued to be abused.”
There were also heated parliamentary exchanges earlier this year as it relates to a $4B expenditure by way of a supplementary provision.

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