The President’s Fund registered a deficit of more than Rs. 337 million in 2006, according to the Auditor-General’s (AG) report submitted to Parliament last week.
The AG’s report also noted that the fund’s board had written off a sum of Rs. 50 million of the deficit, making the money payable to the New Inventions Fund.
The 2006 deficit was an improvement, however, on the previous year’s deficit, which topped Rs. 570 million.
The AG’s report noted other grey areas in the financial statements of the President’s Fund. These included insufficient material provided for audit purposes and the fact that the fund had failed to recover loans made to outside parties.
A large proportion of the fund’s annual payments goes to cover the medical bills of persons who cannot afford to pay the bills themselves. In 2007, Rs 577.69 million was given out as medical-related financial assistance.
However, the report said a sum of more than Rs. 279 million, given out in 2006 to pay medical bills was not supported by receipts or notes of acknowledgement to match the 100 vouchers on which the payments had been made.In 2007, the fund set aside a sum of Rs 67.42 million for the President’s Fund scholarship scheme. However, a test check revealed that a maximum of Rs. 1.2 million had been given out in payment for foreign scholarships.
The AG’s report went on to suggest that monies allocated for cultural and welfare activities had not been well spent.
In one instance, a contractor hired to build a cultural and sports centre at Sammanthurai had been overpaid by Rs. 516,175. According to information made available for audit purposes, the contract signed on November 6, 2006 was for Rs. 2.7 million, but the contractor was paid Rs. 3. 2 million.
In another case, a sum of Rs. 10 million had been left idling for more than one year when construction work on a rest home began on January 10, 2007 under a contract that was signed on November 16, 2005.
The AG’s report pointed out that as of the end of the year under review no action had been taken to either recover or settle loan balances.
A sum of more than Rs. 455 million remains outstanding for the period 1989 to 1999, and including preceding years. The accumulated interest on those loan balances amounted to more than Rs. 331.9
million.
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