Regional corporations have been delinquent in submitting their financial statements to the Auditor General as required by law.
Some of these financial statements date back to an unbroken period of 14 years.
The Auditor General’s 2023 Report which was laid in Parliament last week stated that the Auditor General is yet to receive a total of 92 financial statements from 12 regional corporations. The Arima and Princes Town Corporations are the only two corporations which have not been identified as delinquent.
The Municipal Corporations Act states that the accounts of every corporation shall be subject to audit by the Auditor General in all respects as if the corporation were a department of the Public Service.
However the Auditor General’s report stated that “to date 92 Financial Statements from Regional Corporations have not been received for audit. Expenditure extracted from the Appropriation Accounts of the Ministry for the related years totalled $23 million”.
The Report said the Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo Regional Corporation and the Diego Martin Corporation had not submitted financial statements for the last 14 years—2009 to 2022, while the Tunapuna-Piarco Regional Corporation had not submitted financial statements for the last 12 years—2011 to 2022.
The Point Fortin Corporation had not submitted financial statements for the last nine years- 2014 to 2022, while the Sangre Grande Corporation had not submitted its financial statements to the Auditor General from the last eight years—2015 to 2022. The Siparia Regional Corporation had not submitted financial statements for the years 2016 to 2022 (seven years); while the Chaguanas Borough Corporation had outstanding financial statements for the last six years—2017 to 2022. The San Juan/Laventille Corporation as well as the Mayaro/Rio Claro Corporation had not submitted financial statements for the years 2018 to 2022 (five years). The San Fernando City Corporation, the Port of Spain City Corporation and the Penal/Debe Corporation have financial statements outstanding for the years 2019 to 2022 (four years outstanding).
This information comes at a time when the Corporations are to be given greater financial responsibility and autonomy. They will also have responsibility for substantially larger sums of money in the form of residential property taxes.
Property tax
The Auditor General’s Report showed that while the Government had estimated to collect $51.7 million in property tax for the financial year 2023, it only collected $1.44 million.
The report confirmed that in most cases the approved revenue estimates for 2023, were in excess of the actual revenue received by the Government, except in the area of borrowing where the approved estimate was $8.1 billion but the actual revenue from borrowing was $12.3 billion. Taxes on income and profits were estimated at $28.1 billion but the actual revenue was $27.8 billion, taxes on goods and services were estimated at $9.29 billion, but $5.85 billion was received.
$52 million spent on unoccupied dpp building
With respect to the unoccupied building at the Corner of Park and Henry Streets which was initially earmarked for use by the Director of Public Prosecutions and which was not used due to security concerns, the Auditor General’s Report said that in 2023 expenditure by the Office of the Attorney General on the outfitting of office accommodation for the DPP, North stood at $23,251,670.22 at the end of the financial year 2023.
The report said that for the financial year 2023, the rent paid for this property was $5.625 million. However, the payment of rent was stopped with effect from September 2023. It noted that total rent paid on this property for the period May 1, 2019 to August 31, 2023 was $29.25 million.
That meant that the total rent paid plus the cost of outfitting was $52,501,670.22 for the building which was never occupied.
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