The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al De­part­ment is fac­ing chal­lenges in au­dit­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s fi­nan­cial state­ments.

In fact, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment is on­ly now look­ing at the THA’s Sep­tem­ber 2016 fi­nan­cials.

And so the THA is try­ing to find a “rep­utable, in­de­pen­dent firm” to help them au­dit their fi­nan­cial state­ments.

This is ac­cord­ing to the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and the Econ­o­my in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Joel Jack as he de­liv­ered his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion at the THA on Mon­day.

“In keep­ing with my com­mit­ment made in the 2020 Bud­get State­ment, a meet­ing was con­vened with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al De­part­ment to dis­cuss mat­ters re­lat­ing to the out­stand­ing au­dit of the As­sem­bly’s Fi­nan­cial State­ments. Cur­rent­ly, the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al is au­dit­ing Fi­nan­cial State­ments for the year end­ed 30th Sep­tem­ber 2016 in the face of fi­nan­cial and man­pow­er chal­lenges,” Jack said.

“I am there­fore pleased to ad­vise this Ho­n­ourable House that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al agreed with the As­sem­bly’s rec­om­men­da­tion to en­gage a rep­utable, in­de­pen­dent firm to as­sist with the au­dit­ing of the Fi­nan­cial State­ments,” he said.

As a re­sult of this the THA with the as­sis­tance of the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ICATT), a Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RFP) was is­sued.

“An RFP has been is­sued and we are wait­ing on a for­mal re­port on the RF­Ps from ICATT,” Jack told Guardian Me­dia.

“You may re­call in my pre­vi­ous bud­get state­ments, that I ac­knowl­edged some chal­lenges em­a­nat­ing from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port, not sug­gest­ing malfea­sance by any means but recog­nis­ing that our sys­tems were an­ti­quat­ed,” Jack said.

“We em­barked on a pro­gramme to re-en­gi­neer and mod­ernise our ac­count­ing sys­tems, aimed at in­creas­ing ef­fi­cien­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and re­al-time de­ci­sion mak­ing ul­ti­mate­ly elim­i­nat­ing the use of a man­u­al ac­count­ing sys­tem,” he said.

Jack said the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the In­te­grat­ed Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (IFMIS) pi­lot­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank is one of the ma­jor projects be­ing un­der­tak­en by the THA.

“This project has ex­pe­ri­enced some de­lay in its roll­out ow­ing to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the im­ple­men­ta­tion time­lines are be­ing re­viewed. This notwith­stand­ing, pre COVID-19 saw the com­ple­tion of the new Chart of Ac­counts (CoA) based on the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s (IMF) Gen­er­al Fi­nan­cial Sta­tis­tics (GFS),” he said.

“The base elec­tron­ic mod­ule for as­set/in­ven­to­ry record­ing and main­te­nance reg­is­tra­tion sys­tems of the Gov­ern­ment was al­so com­plet­ed and the con­fig­u­ra­tion of the sys­tem with the Chart of Ac­counts is on­go­ing.

Jack said the THA is “com­mit­ted to Pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment mod­erni­sa­tion and best prac­tice, as well as in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty and we are work­ing dili­gent­ly to en­sure that this project is com­plet­ed in the most ef­fi­cient and time­ly man­ner.”

Ac­cord­ing to pre­vi­ous re­ports by the Busi­ness Guardian suc­ces­sive au­di­tor gen­er­al re­ports have raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about the way in which pub­lic funds are be­ing ac­count­ed for by the THA.

It is a tale of fail­ure by the THA to pro­vide the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al with the ap­pro­pri­ate doc­u­ments, miss­ing vouch­ers, poor ac­count­ing, and a gen­er­al lax ap­proach to ac­count­ing and spend­ing of pub­lic funds.

A 2016 re­port of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al which looked at the 2015 fi­nan­cial year, re­vealed that vouch­ers to­talling al­most $500 mil­lion were not pro­duced by the THA for ex­am­i­na­tion.

The re­port al­so high­light­ed dis­crep­an­cies in ex­pen­di­ture.

In 2015, the THA spent $32 mil­lion to pur­chase two prop­er­ties, Sanc­tu­ary Vil­la at Black Rock and Man­ta Lodge and Dive Vil­la at Spey­side.

The THA’s first chief sec­re­tary Ho­choy Charles said there is a lot of ig­no­rance with re­spect to the as­sem­bly and this even ex­tend­ed to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al De­part­ment.

“A lot of peo­ple do not un­der­stand the THA Act. It is a lot of ig­no­rance,” Charles said.

“The THA is not a gov­ern­ment de­part­ment it repli­cates the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad, the House of As­sem­bly is like the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and un­der the gov­ern­ment in Trinidad, no­tice I said in Trinidad and not of Trinidad be­cause we have one gov­ern­ment of T&T as you know,” Charles said.

Charles said the mon­ey ap­proved for the THA in the na­tion­al bud­get is sent to the THA Fund in quar­ter­ly tranch­es.

The THA Fund is cre­at­ed by Sec­tion 141 of the con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and in­cludes all rev­enue raised for To­ba­go in­clu­sive of the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion.

“So some­times when the staff in Trinidad are ex­am­in­ing the ac­counts of the THA they ex­am­ine it as though they are deal­ing with a min­istry and they take up the es­ti­mates and look­ing at it to say ‘you know the gov­ern­ment sent this mon­ey to To­ba­go how you spent this mon­ey? The as­sem­bly does not spend mon­ey like that,” Charles said.

“The ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil makes the de­ci­sion as to how the quar­ter­ly ad­vances are go­ing to be spent and then re­leas­es mon­ey just like the min­is­ter of fi­nance will sign a re­lease, re­lease these monies to a di­vi­sion,” he said.

Charles said the THA is not bound by the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion un­der the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act.

“You know we are not bound by the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions un­der the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act, we are bound by the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act but not by the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions. We have our reg­u­la­tions that we pre­pared un­der Sec­tion 52 of the THA Act and Sec­tion 78 of the THA Act and we are bound by those rules,” he said.

Charles said he be­lieves “ed­u­ca­tion” would help ad­dress the ig­no­rance with re­spect to the THA and its op­er­a­tions.

“The As­sem­bly makes a lot of blun­ders be­cause the peo­ple who are there for the last 20 years do not un­der­stand the THA,” Charles said.

Charles said even the longest-serv­ing THA chief sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don was not as au courant about the THA Act as he should have been.

“I don’t even know what they do, they are do­ing a lot of stuff that they do not un­der­stand,” Charles said.

Charles said when he was THA chief sec­re­tary the bud­get that he had avail­able was around $300 mil­lion.

The THA is re­quest­ing $4.71 bil­lion from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment in its 2020/2021 bud­get. The re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture is $3.07 bil­lion while de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture is $1.5 bil­lion.