Audit on rent

By HELEN TARAWA
AN audit is being carried out into Government departments to justify the arrangements for office rental payments, Treasurer Charles Abel says.
Deputy Prime Minister Abel said the audit should be completed at the end of this month to review every government department and their office allocations. Abel said there was an under-budget on the rentals of about K178 million in the national budget.
He said the 2017 supplementary budget endorsed by Cabinet and to be tabled in Parliament next week would have some remedy for the under-budgeting of rental allocations.
The audit follows the locking out of some government departments and agencies by landlords for the non-payment of rent.
He said there was an exercise to relocate some of the departments to the Central Government Building, Manasupe House and freeing up space at Morauta House.
“In the budgetary exercise, they reduced the allocation for rentals because of the savings.
“Those savings didn’t materialise.
“That process didn’t happen at the rate that we would have hoped and we were left with the problem of under-budgeting on rentals.
“We need to create that appropriation through a supplementary budget enabling Treasury to
authorise expenditure up to that level.
“We had that temporary issue which will be addressed in additional funds allocated to official rental in the supplementary budget.”