One of the major issues in the debacle playing out in a public battle between the Auditor general and the government regarding the public accounts of 2023, involves a lack of supporting documents related to a portion of the approximately three-billion-dollar understatement of the fiscal 2023 public accounts.
The Auditor General Jaiwantee Ramdass, received and considered the revised figures in the Amended Statement of Public Accounts for the financial year 2023 from the Ministry of Finance, however, having considered the Ministry of Finance’s revised submission about the understatement of revenue to the tune of $2.59 billion, the Auditor General could not use these revised figures in her Report on the country’s finances because of the absence of critical supporting documents.
An official accompanying ‘management letter’ recommended the relevant documentation be provided to support the changes made in the amended financial statements. Under the heading “Observations”, the letter stated: “On 2024 March 28th, the Ministry of Finance requested an amendment on the Statement of Revenue due to a variance of a material amount of $3,379,777,908.00. At this date, $2,598,130,761.72 was reconciled (by the Ministry of Finance) leaving an unreconciled amount of $781,647,146.28.
The total amount of revenue in the original statement for fiscal 2023, was given as $61,890,373,020.22, while the total amount of revenue in the amended statement was listed as $64,488,503,781.94. The management latter specified that the $2.59 billion increase in the Statement of Revenue could not be verified because “supporting documents for the amended figure were not provided.”
On April 09th , 2024, $2,598,130,761.72 was reconciled (by the Ministry of Finance) leaving an unreconciled amount of $781,647,146.28. On April 9th, the Ministry of Finance indicated the reconciliation process was completed with a total reconciled variance of $2,599,278,188.73. This leaves an unreconciled amount of the original March figure of $780,499,719.27.” The management letter recommended that the ministry explain if the figure of $780,499,719,27 had been reconciled or still needed to be reconciled.
Since then the government has passed in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a resolution to extend the time for the MOF to provide further information and documents to the Auditor general, and for the Auditor general to be able to receive the additional information. An investigation has been also launched into the entire controversial issue.