Gail Alexan­der

There is no miss­ing mon­ey! This was point­ed out yes­ter­day by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who ac­cused Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mak­ing up sto­ries in the im­passe be­tween Fi­nance Min­istry of­fi­cials and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in the 2023 pub­lic ac­counts mat­ter.

He did so in a state­ment re­spond­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­cent call for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to launch an im­me­di­ate in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Im­bert’s con­duct re­gard­ing “miss­ing bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s call fol­lowed a Privy Coun­cil judg­ment in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s favour. The Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly dropped its probe in­to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s con­duct.

De­tail­ing the process in­volved in sub­mit­ting ac­counts to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, which in­volves cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by three min­istry of­fi­cers, Im­bert re­butted two of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claims.

“The Fi­nance Min­is­ter, there­fore, can­not be se­ri­ous­ly ac­cused by any right-think­ing per­son of be­ing re­spon­si­ble for any ‘miss­ing mon­ey’ in the fi­nan­cial state­ments, es­pe­cial­ly since there is no miss­ing mon­ey. That sto­ry is an or­ches­trat­ed cam­paign be­ing mount­ed by the Op­po­si­tion to fool the gullible!” he said

Im­bert, who ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of “clutch­ing at straws,” not­ed that she has been in pub­lic life for al­most 30 years and must have a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of the process.

Im­bert ex­plained that in the an­nu­al for­mat, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al has pro­duced a re­port on the fol­low­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments:

i) State­ments of the Trea­sury show­ing the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of the coun­try;

ii) Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Ac­counts of in­di­vid­ual Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cers’

iii) State­ments of Re­ceipts and Dis­burse­ments of in­di­vid­ual Re­ceivers of Rev­enue, and

iv) Fi­nan­cial State­ments of in­di­vid­ual Ad­min­is­ter­ing Of­fi­cers of Funds.

He said these state­ments aren’t pre­pared by a fi­nance min­is­ter and are ac­com­pa­nied by a State­ment of De­c­la­ra­tion and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion signed by the three Fi­nance Min­istry of­fi­cials - name­ly the Ac­count­ing Of­fi­cer, who is the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, the Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts and the Trea­sury Di­rec­tor.

He added: “It is now well es­tab­lished that an un­for­tu­nate ac­count­ing er­ror was made by of­fi­cials at the Cen­tral Bank on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, as a re­sult of a fail­ure of soft­ware as­so­ci­at­ed with a new elec­tron­ic cheque clear­ing sys­tem in­tro­duced by the Cen­tral Bank in 2023. This er­ror found its way in­to the pub­lic ac­counts when they were sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in Jan­u­ary 2024.

“Again, for the avoid­ance of doubt, this ac­count­ing er­ror was not dis­cov­ered by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice. In­stead, it was dis­cov­ered by per­son­nel in the Bud­get Di­vi­sion do­ing their usu­al year-end re­view of the fis­cal out­turn for 2023, af­ter the ac­counts were sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al. Fol­low­ing this dis­cov­ery, the pub­lic ser­vants in the Trea­sury sub­se­quent­ly at­tempt­ed to bring the ac­count­ing er­ror to the at­ten­tion of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.”