Government hiding overspending, claims Somare

ANGORAM MP Arthur Somare has  accused the Peter O’Neill-led government of using “creative accounting” to hide vast amounts of overspending last year.
He said the government’s claim that there had only been a K63.7 million budget deficit was false.
“The accurate budget figure will be hundreds of millions in the red with a soaring domestic debt burden that is being carried over into the 2012 financial year.
“This is an act of economic mismanagement by the O’Neill regime and a recipe for financial disaster, on the eve of a general election that sadly follows many years of good fiscal management by the Somare government,” he said.
“Statements to parliament by the Finance Minister Don Polye and Peter O’Neill regarding the fiscal budget out-turn for 2011 are misleading and false.”
He said not all material expenditures in the 2011 bud­-
get had been accounted for in the government’s consolidated general ledger system four months into 2012.
“The figures attributed to Polye do not include correct figures for receipts, government payroll, budgeted expenditure, actual financing figures and trust accounts even though the Fiscal Responsibility Act has placed a March 31 deadline on such data,” Somare said.
“There are serious concerns that the hidden budget blow-out of 2011 will be worsened this year by a regime that believes it only needs an act of parliament to exercise a parliamentary dictatorship devoid of scrutiny.
“What is happening is on a much worse scale than the financial disaster wrought on this nation when Sir Mekere Morauta made a massive raid on the public purse to fight the 2002 national election.
“The Central Bank has reported that when the Somare government took office in August 2002, it faced the unprecedented challenge of a budget running at an annual deficit of 10% of gross domestic product, with interest rates above 21%”.
“It is well documented that the O’Neill government last year spent K500 million for which there had been no budget allocation.”