Accounts still due as LoGB lays out next spending round

(CNS): The Leader of Government Business will be making the Strategic Policy Statement (SPS) in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday laying out the plan for government earnings and expenditure for the next fiscal year. However, as Kurt Tibbetts delivers his statement regarding his budgetary ambitions for the year 2009/10, many government departments and entities have still not filed their accounts with the Auditor General for the years back to 2005/06.

Speaking at last week’s post-cabinet media briefing, Tibbetts said the SPS is the first phase of the budgetary process and gives a broad outline of forecasts, targets and expenditure. He also said that the outstanding accounts, revealed in the Auditor General’s report The State of Financial Accountability Reporting, did not impact the SPS. In response to a media question as to how it would be possible to set out another annual government budget of around $0.5 billion when the last three years remain largely unaccounted for, LoGB said the government was never actually in a position where it was unaware of how public money had been spent.

“In truth, it does not prevent us from being factual with regard to spending,” Tibbetts said but added that the outstanding accounts were beginning to be finished and he thought by February the financials would be up to date. “From the time we took office we recognised the situation and have applied every kind of pressure we can think of,” he said.

Auditor General Dan Duguay, who published the report earlier this year, spoke with CNS and said that a significant number of the larger ministries were still a long way from catching up but that some of the smaller agencies and departments were getting to grips with their reporting.

“While there has been significant improvement,” he said, “there are still accounts for the year 2005/06 that are outstanding. It is mainly the larger ministries that are having problems catching up and they will have to do more than one set of accounts over the next few years until they are up to date.”

Duguay explained that since his report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly he has been working as closely as possible to get the various departments back on track but the process is ongoing. According to the law, all 35 government ministries, agencies and authorities should now have submitted their 2009/10 accounts to him but some are still three years behind.

“What I am trying to do is to get the larger ministries that are the most behind to at least commit to a schedule for catching up so that we have an idea of when they will eventually be back on track,” he explained, saying there was no point in going over and over the fact that they were delinquent; the important point was to get everyone moving forward. He admitted there was still a lot of work to do and there were some difficulties getting departments to commit to a timetable.

“I do have a report ready to present to the Finance Committee to update the members on the situation but that meeting keeps getting set back,” he said, adding that he had not yet been given a new date when the committee would meet to assess the overall problem. Although the Governor, Stuart Jack, had also expressed his concern over accounting delays at the time of Duguay’s report in the summer, Duguay said he had not heard from the Governor’s office requesting an update on the situation or regarding any assistance the Governor’s office could offer in addressing the delinquency of accounts.

Duguay also said he had still only received around nine new sets of accounts for the year end 2008/09 which were, under the law, due to his office by the end of October. “The accounts that have come in are from the statutory authorities that have over the years been persistent with their submissions such as CIMA, the Water Authority, the National Roads Authority and the Maritime Authority, among others.”

He also stated that he intended to do another report in 2009 that would reflect once again where each government entity was and what attempts they had made to account for their spending of public money.