More than eight months fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 31, 2024, dead­line for the Min­istry of Fi­nance to sub­mit the pub­lic ac­counts of T&T for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, the im­passe be­tween Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass and the Min­istry of Fi­nance over those ac­counts seems far from be­ing re­solved.

On Mon­day in Par­lia­ment, in dis­cussing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Spe­cial Re­port, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert again poured salt in the wound of this is­sue, when he re­ferred to the fail­ure by Ms Ram­dass to state that the er­ror in the pub­lic ac­counts was cor­rect­ed in her spe­cial re­port on the is­sue.

“We view this omis­sion on her part as a con­tin­u­ing cam­paign of non-co­op­er­a­tion and crit­i­cism of pub­lic of­fi­cials in the Fi­nance Min­is­ter by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al,” Mr Im­bert told Par­lia­ment.

This lan­guage by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter is quite un­for­tu­nate, giv­en the fact that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and Gov­ern­ment are cur­rent­ly em­broiled in two court mat­ters, one of which is head­ing to the Privy Coun­cil be­fore the end of this year.

The con­ver­sa­tion is al­so re­gret­table be­cause the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s orig­i­nal re­port out­lined ma­jor weak­ness­es which re­sult­ed in a dis­claimer of opin­ion be­ing giv­en, “due to not be­ing able to ob­tain suf­fi­cient au­dit ev­i­dence on the pub­lic ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial year 2023,” ac­cord­ing to the spe­cial re­port of Ms Ram­dass.

It is al­so like­ly that if the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al does not ob­tain “suf­fi­cient au­dit ev­i­dence” to sat­is­fy her­self that 2023’s ac­counts can be cleared, there is not much that the Gov­ern­ment can do, short of seek­ing her dis­missal, to com­pel her to abide by the wish­es of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

That is be­cause T&T’s Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act, at sec­tion 9, re­quires the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to sat­is­fy her­self that “all rea­son­able pre­cau­tions have been tak­en to safe­guard the col­lec­tion of pub­lic monies and that the laws, di­rec­tions and in­struc­tions re­lat­ing there­to have been du­ly ob­served.”

This le­gal re­quire­ment that Au­di­tor Gen­er­als must sat­is­fy is at the heart of the dis­pute, which per­tains to the un­der­state­ment of $2.6 bil­lion in rev­enue, re­port­ed­ly as a re­sult of the Cen­tral Bank’s in­tro­duc­tion of a new elec­tron­ic cheque clear­ing sys­tem.

If, how­ev­er, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al be­lieves that she needs to au­dit the Cen­tral Bank’s cheque clear­ing sys­tem to sat­is­fy her­self that the col­lec­tion of pub­lic mon­ey has been safe­guard­ed, all rea­son­able ef­forts should be made by Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Alvin Hi­laire’s team to fa­cil­i­tate the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s de­part­ment.

Mr Im­bert has opined that staff of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s de­part­ment ex­pressed their sat­is­fac­tion that the $2.6 bil­lion un­der­state­ment was ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ac­count­ed for at a Ju­ly 22 meet­ing. If that is, in fact, the case, there should be no hin­drance to Ms Ram­dass meet­ing with the top ex­ec­u­tives of the Cen­tral Bank and re­ceiv­ing the re­ports and work­ing pa­pers the Cen­tral Bank would have pro­cured in its ef­fort to analyse and rec­ti­fy the is­sues with the cheque clear­ing sys­tem.

This is­sue of the un­re­solved au­dit of T&T’s 2023 ac­counts has gone on for far too long and with these lat­est de­vel­op­ments, risks de­scend­ing in­to a ridicu­lous and far­ci­cal bac­cha­nal, quite un­be­com­ing of the of­fices in­volved and serv­ing on­ly to erode the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and in­tegri­ty of these two en­ti­ties.