Over $741M spent by Home Affairs Ministry in 2020 unaccounted for—AG Report

Jan 04, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Auditors were unable to account for a total of $741.3M spent by the Ministry of Home Affairs during the year 2020 because of missing records.
According to Auditor General (AG), Deodat Sharma’s, end of year report for 2020, the monies were reportedly spent for both current and capital expenditure but the Ministry failed to produce any financial records for the spending, to be audited.

The Ministry of Home Affairs located along Brickdam, Georgetown.

The report stated that a total of 132 payment vouchers were not presented for an audit. Out of that quantity, 100 were said to be for current expenditure and reportedly totaled $12M. That means that $12M was supposedly spent on goods and services for the Ministry that year that could not be accounted for.
The remaining 32 payment vouchers that were presented for an audit would have represented a total of $729.2M spent by the Ministry to acquire fixed assets (Capital Expenditure) for that period.
It was pointed out in the report that without these records, auditors are unable to determine if the Ministry received value for the monies it had spent or if indeed the amount reported was actually paid out to suppliers.
The report also highlighted that this is not the first time that the Home Affairs Ministry has failed to produce financial records for audit and noted that the practice is starting to become a trend.
The Ministry in 2019 failed to present some 52 payment vouchers totaling some $49.6M.
When confronted with the AG’s findings, the Ministry reportedly stated that it is still trying to locate the missing payment vouchers and submit them to be audited.
Missing financial records is proving to be a hindrance to the AG’s work and is not only limited to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
In fact, it was reported in a recent Kaieteur News article that auditors are unable to account for billions due to missing records.
It was outlined that 1,328 payment vouchers totaling some $2.8 billion were not presented for the 2020 audit.
Out of the 1,328 missing payment vouchers, 1,282 represented at least $2.7B that were spent by the Office of the President, the Office of the Prime Minister, the Guyana Defence Force, the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Home Affairs. The remaining 46 valued at $77.921M were spent within the Administrative Regions.

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