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Guyana Post Office in over $20B debt
…Still to collect $9B owed by several agencies –AG Report reveals
Auditor General, Deodat Sharma
The Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC) is neck deep in over $20B in debt and is still to go after some $9B owed to it by several agencies.
This was noted in the Auditor General’s 2017 report. Auditor General, Deodat Sharma said that the audit on GPOC for the years 2010 and 2011 was not conducted by his office, but by a contracted firm.
The contracted firm, which Sharma opted not to name in his report, said that GPOC owes an amount of $9.911 billion and 10.178 billion to agencies for the years 2010 and 2011, respectively. It was noted however that details were unavailable during the time of the audit to support the said amounts. Independent confirmations were also not received.
Further to this, it was noted that the sum of $9.007 billion was owed by agencies from previous years. Sharma said, “This was not cleared neither was any reconciliation done. Independent confirmation of balances was requested but not obtained. An aged listing was not available and balances denominated in foreign currency were not converted at closing exchange rate.”
With regard to fixed assets amounting to $65.443M, Sharma’s external auditor said that this could not be verified as a listing or a register was not provided. In fact, the title deeds were not available for examination. Compounding this situation is the fact that there were no policies for acquisition, capitalization and disposal of assets. He said, too, that depreciation was computed on the closing balances for each category of asset.
Sharma’s report also stated that the trial balance for GPOC was greater than the receivables schedule by $297.254M and $74.566M for the years 2010 and 2011, respectively.
“No reconciliations of these differences were done. Details of other receivables totaling $56.546M were not provided. The inventory balances of $158.441M and 159.034M included credit balances of $30.644M and $39.936M, which represent incorrect postings for the years 2010 and 2011, respectively,” the report said.
It added, “Payables and accruals included a suspense account of $57.812M and $19.458M, debit balances of $136.683M and $39.822M for the years 2010 and 2011, respectively. Tax recoverable of $153.905M from the Guyana Revenue Authority was coming forward from previous years and no details were provided to verify this balance.”
Sharma also highlighted that GPOC’s bank balance included disaggregate differences of $246.639M and $479.020M for the years 2010 and 2011, respectively.
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