No bank reconciliation for agriculture funds

 THE controversial National Agriculture Development Programme (NADP) into which some K500 million is said to have evaporated did not have bank reconciliation for 2010 to give the Auditor-General some clue as to transactions within the programme.

Audit also discovered three other trust accounts held by the Agriculture and Livestock Department for which there were no bank reconciliation. 

The trust accounts are Lae In-Service Training Centre; NADB, Morobe and Eastern Highlands (SSSEP New Zealand Aid Funding) and Productive Partnership in Agriculture Project.

These are among anomalies discovered by the Auditor-General and the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee in their report on the 2010 accounts of the department.

The department’s accounts and those kept by the Department of Finance had different amounts recorded as the total actual expenditure for 2010.

The department records showed a total K10,788,952 while Finance records showed K17,445,927, a significant variation of K6,656,975 for which no explanation has been offered during audit inspection.

Among others, warrant authorities for nine months of the year were not filed and not sighted; monthly salary payments totalling K5,452,684 were not posed in the department’s records; and payments of pensions, retirements and gratuity totalling K2,645,273 were not posed in the department’s ledger but noted at the main public account ledge (TMS) held by Finance.

The department’s development budget for 2010 was K7.689 million. No fund allocation through warrant authority from treasury was made in 2010, the auditor-general noted.

DAL’s asset register revealed it held records only of land, institutional housing and motor vehicle fleet. There were not plant and equipment records on the asset register and no records of the register being updated and there were no records of stock take.

Attractive items such as mobile phones, digital cameras and laptop computers were not recorded in an attractive assets register, the audit discovered.

A total 20 vehicles out of 47 on the assets register carried private number plates. There were no data on condition, maintenance and rent fees collected on the department’s recorded 80 houses.

The department has 431 land areas in 18 provinces all of which had no record of occupancy or legal status. 137 land portions did not specific land use and 391 did not have their land lease details.

There and other irregularities were reported back to management by the auditor-general but as at June 2012 it reported no responses.