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Report of the Auditor General 2007: Different year, same mess

No change
The report of the Auditor General on the Public Accounts of the country for 2007 has been tabled in the National Assembly and is now officially available to the taxpaying public and commendably on the Audit Office’s website. The story is no different from that of last year, from that of the year before, or from that of the year before that: late by ten months beyond the statutory deadline; a story of reckless abuse of the public funds; condemnation and threats from the opposition; and the nine-day outrage by the public followed by whatever revelation inevitably comes to light. Let us go back to the report for 2000 which was reviewed in Business Page of May 19, 2002 in the form of an imaginary letter to Mr Stanley Ming, then a member of the Public Accounts Committee which is mandated to review and report on the report. In part, this is what the ‘letter’ said:

“A significant number of bank accounts currently in use, including the Guyana High Commission London Account, as well as non-operational accounts were allowed to be overdrawn by large amounts in contravention of Section 22 of the Financial Administration & Audit Act (FAA). Continues.

“The Consolidated Fund is overdrawn by tens of billions while the sum total of all bank accounts (including the overdrawn balance on the Consolidated Fund but excluding the balances on the bank accounts special projects) reflects a positive balance. Continues.

“The State continues to provide funding annually to several public entities even though they do not comply with their statutory duty to submit audited financial statements. Continues.

“The Contingencies Fund continues to be abused despite repeated negative comments on this practice. Continues.

“Proceeds from the Guyana Lotteries are not being paid over to the Consolidated Fund but are kept in a ‘special bank account’ held at the Central Bank and used to meet public expenditure without parliamentary approval… despite the public commitment given by the President and de facto Minister of Finance that this would be corrected.”

Some change
Some things have changed. The report has been cut down in size – the 2000 report contained 2,120 paragraphs; now it is 557 paragraphs. Government expenditure has jumped from $47 billion in 2000 to $101 billion, or more than double. Reports of corruption no longer make news. There has been a Financial Management and Accountability Act that demands more not less accountability, and an Audit Act that sets greater obligations and higher standards on the Audit Office. Have things got better? I do not think so. Back then, we had a professionally qualified accountant heading the office, now we do not. The independence of the office is now more compromised than it was with Mr Deodat Sharma, Auditor General (ag) reporting that he was summoned for instructions by President Jagdeo, clearly in breach of the constitutional provision that the Audit Office should “not [be] subject to the control or direction of any person or authority.” Egregiously, the wife of the Finance Minister is now in a position to give professional guidance to the Auditor General (ag) by virtue of her position as his qualified assistant.

The administration’s response
Predictably and once again, the Minister of Finance Dr Ashni Singh has criticised the report for not reflecting the comments and responses of the various budget agencies and accounting officers. He cannot be serious. The report is in fact full of such comments, even when they make little sense or are misleading. For example on page 5, the Ministry of Finance’s response to the absence of end of year outcomes required under section 68 of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act 2003 is that the information was not forthcoming from the ministries, agencies and departments. That obligation falls on the Minister of Finance who has more than an adequate set of sanctions to ensure that he gets the information he needs.

But I suspect that the reason is more political. One of the major variances is the revenue collected from the new VAT and Excise Tax introduced in 2007. A single agency over which the Ministry of Finance exercises controls administers those taxes. More than one of them knows that the reason for the massive surplus is that the VAT rate had been incorrectly calculated, but that despite the early detection of the error, the government persisted in what some may consider a fraud on the nation. This information was around and an independent Audit Office should have done its own assessment and put the findings to the ministry.

Indifference
A constant refrain in the responses is that the Head of the Budget Agency had indicated that this matter was being addressed by the Ministry of Finance; that these were presently engaging the attention of the Ministry of Finance; that the Head of the Budget Agency had indicated that this issue was being addressed by the Minister of Finance; and that the Head of Budget Agency had explained that the administration had since written the Finance Secretary to have this matter rectified and was awaiting a response (they are all in the same building). The state of the audits for entities coming under the Office of the President and for which reports have not been laid in the National Assembly deteriorated, while the excuse by the budget agency that “every effort is being made” to do so was met with a further comment from the Auditor General (ag) calling for “special effort” – at best an apparent form of indifference by the Audit Office. But can society be so indifferent about the failure by the administration to properly account for public funds? Since the Minister would also have been aware that a substantial part of the report is of prior year matters which have not been resolved, his response to the report can only be seen as a political rather than technocratic reaction, confident that all will soon be forgotten.

New GPC again
For all the apparent sound and fury generated by the report, all it does is identify some of the better known examples of gross financial irregularities and improprieties that feed the public’s appetite for scandal. Advances of hundreds of millions of dollars to the New GPC, friends of the President, continue to be made for the company to buy drugs for the Guyana Public Hospital Corporation in breach of the tender procedures. One of GPC’s senior officials sits on the board of the hospital, which also does not maintain proper accounting records so that both the non-receipt of items and their issue cannot be determined. What successive reports have failed to do is cause any change in behaviour by a government whose financial management is repeatedly endorsed by the electorate. Perhaps the President was right when he described segments of the public as financially illiterate.

By now the public is well aware of the breach of the constitution regarding the Lotto funds and one wonders why the report only mentions the amount over a ten-year period rather than the period covered by the audit. The report also does not state that the Lotto money is being spent by a person who has no authority under the law to spend any money. There is no great virtue in repeating the statement that the Lotto funds are not being put into the Consolidated Fund as required by the constitution. It is not that it is being held safely in trust or investments – the money is being spent by President Jagdeo as he pleases.

Tardiness and illegality
Where are the sugar unions in the face of the continuing failure to provide satisfactory evidence of $1.451 billion as deposits held for investments on behalf of the Sugar Industry Labour Welfare Fund, the Sugar Industry Rehabilitation Fund and the Sugar Industry Price Stabilisation Fund, two of which have not been audited for twenty-eight years and the other for eleven years? One of the ironies is that GINA, which is being used to defend the government’s record of financial management is itself in breach of the audit requirement.

The report also highlights a transaction involving Region 6 that smells of illegality including differences in vehicle chassis number and full up-front payment when the contract calls for progress payments. If the Customs officers could be referred to the DPP why not those involved in this purchase? And why has the Guyana Elections Commission not taken action against the “firm” that took 268 cartons of Polaroid film valued at $30.485 million which it has failed to recover from the “firm”?

Value for money
Once again the report announces that a Value-for-Money Unit (VFM) is being set up and after four years we can expect a VFM report. That we had to get assistance from Canada to achieve this is bad enough, but the choice of entity makes the idea into a mockery. I visited the Palms briefly not too long ago, and it was shocking to see the conditions under which the residents are housed and the staff have to work. The laundry, kitchen, sleeping and dining facilities are all in a state of disrepair, strangled for cash and other resources. What the Palms requires is not a Value-for-Money audit, but a money-for-value audit, refurbishment, additional staffing, new equipment for the kitchen and laundry, etc.

Conclusion
The recurrence of the egregious weaknesses and exorbitant losses resulting from poor financial administration and a weakened Audit Office suggests either an unwillingness to deal with the problem or a ‘we-like-it-so’ attitude by the government. Even the superficial enhancements in the Audit Office have to be financed with grants and loans, and in 2007 a second grant was obtained from the IDB to implement certain aspects of the office’s three-year Strategic Plan. Unable to do some of the most basic audit functions, to discharge the office’s obligations under various legislation and to complete the audits of the state entities in a timely manner, the Audit Office is now about to establish a Forensic Audit and Quality Assurance section.

How that will solve the problems that have persisted for more than ten years is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile the Auditor General tells us he cannot be sure about the accounts presented to him for audit by the Ministry of Finance.

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Stanford 20/20 smoke and mirrors and an update on Clico

Introduction
The columns of Business Page have reported on far more financial scandals than it would have liked. Although it was soon overtaken as the biggest corporate scandal ever, Enron was covered in a series in February 2002 and remembered in a piece one year later to mark its anniversary. Parmalat too with a hole of billions on its balance sheet and Nick Leeson who brought down the 233-year-old Barings Bank, the Queen’s bank, were accorded their fair share of space. More recently it was Bernard Madoff of the US and B. Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computer Ltd of India to add to the list of corporate fraudsters. Each fraud has had its own consequences, with Enron taking down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the world’s most respected accounting firms, as well as the investments of its employees’ pension scheme.

For the most part however the direct consequences have been felt by employees, creditors and shareholders, including pension schemes. And they have all had some common ingredients − a tale of lies, deception, smoke and mirrors, sleeping accountants and poor governance and weak regulators, all fed by frenzied greed in the name of capitalism. Each, however, took place in larger economies that could absorb a moderate level of stress and setbacks.

‘Sticky Wicket’
On the other hand, the fall from grace of cricket icon Sir Allen Stanford is in a different ballpark altogether. After the government, the Stanford group is/was the largest employer in its home base Antigua. It has its own cricket ground – named appropriately Sticky Wicket − with swimming pool, lighting and facilities that rival the government-owned stadium and the record-making Antigua Recreation Ground. It operates the Bank of Antigua which has a significant share of the retail banking in that country. It owns some of the choicest pieces of real estate on the island. It was, prior to its fall, planning to develop an area called Shell Beach and nearby Maiden Island, towards the end of the airport runway, with a marina, shopping and entertainment complex.

Stanford’s towering image, cosy relationship, influence and hold over Antigua simply cannot be under-estimated. The island’s Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer, never a friend of Stanford, admitted that the charges brought by the SEC against Mr Stanford and two of his associates could have “catastrophic” consequences. He urged the public not to panic. It was like telling persons in a rainstorm not to take protective action – and such advice was quietly ignored by depositors who queued up to withdraw their money from the Stanford-owned Bank of Antigua. Seizing the political opportunity to crush Lester Bird, he has called general elections which he is certain to win.

Threat
There is also a wider, regional threat to the Eastern Caribbean Dollar – one of the most stable currencies in the world and which is managed by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the monetary authority for eight OECS island economies including Antigua. The bank in a statement reportedly handed to people queuing to get their money said its “liquidity position is sound.” It was careful to note however that that the bank’s ability to meet customer requirements applied “under normal circumstances” and that if individuals persisted in rushing to the bank in a panic, they would precipitate a collapse. The consequences of massive withdrawals and conversion into and flight of foreign currency is going to test the stability of the EC dollar over the coming weeks.

But the image Mr Stanford cultivated was even bigger than the assets or his plans. For example, the helicopter in which he landed at Lord’s to announce his “20/20 for 20 million” deal with the England and Wales Cricket Board was not, as the gold-plated Stanford name and logo emblem on its body indicated, corporate property but one rented for the day. Nor was the $20 million jackpot in the treasure chest shown to the world at the launch real money – it was at most about US$100,000 standing atop wads and wads of paper. It was one big con. The press, fascinated by the Texan billionaire, was too dazzled by the dollars to see the game at work and to ask questions.

Dazzled by wealth and….
Stanford was flamboyant, ambitious and most importantly for the gullible, including most of the region, fabulously rich. But contrary to his tale of a family heritage and inheritance associated with Stanford University, Stanford’s real wealth had its source in the early 1980s when he and his father James Stanford bought distressed properties in Texas during the oil industry bust and the S&L crisis, rehabilitated them and sold them at huge profits when the market got better.

But Texas was too big for the man who had visions of grandeur and royalty. He wanted to be king and chose first Montserrat to base his operations before moving to Antigua where he became a real force during the rule of the Bird family, the father-and-son dynasty that held power for more than 40 years. It was during that period that Stanford helped the Birds turn Antigua into a tax haven and soon made him into a billionaire. With his personal wealth estimated at more than US$2 billion, he was bigger than the economy of Antigua and so Stanford could get whatever Stanford wanted. He demanded and received the trappings of royalty that Texas could not give him – a knighthood without the need to bow in front of the Queen. In fact that knighthood was granted to him by the Birds. He ran his financial empire from the island’s airport office park which was the most iconic landmark to greet any visitor to the island. While his empire extended to Latin America his colossal status derived from his tryst with West Indian cricket of which he was seen as the saviour following years of the most pathetic management by a succession of the most pathetic Board of Directors ever to have ruled the game anywhere in the world. With the glitter of millions, he redefined West Indian cricket into a game of fast paced entertainment, money and image, particularly appealing to the lucrative television market.

Criminal charges likely
The details of Stanford’s fall are still unfolding but what seems to have emerged so far is that the company was selling investors high-yielding certificates of deposit on the basis they were safe and liquid investments. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Stanford’s investment portfolio was an opaque “black box,” including holdings in illiquid real estate and private equity. Following investigations that had been going on since last summer, the SEC has filed charges against three entities, Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, and its affiliated Houston-based investment advisers, Stanford Group Company and Stanford Capital Management.

Unlike Kenneth Lay or Madoff or Raju, Stanford has not been charged with any criminal offence – at least not yet. The action brought against Stanford is a civil action although the word fraud has been used by the SEC involving somewhere between $8 and $9.2 billion. It has been reported that the FBI is carrying out its own investigations but that it does not want to lay charges until it has been able to find sufficient evidence to secure a conviction. Should it move too early it will have set in train a schedule that would force criminal investigators to charge, indict and construct a trial within a tight time-frame. Whether it is criminal or civil fraud is the kind of fine distinction that does not interest depositors and investors who have been rushing to all locations where Stanford operates demanding the return of their money.

Impact
It has been reported that some of our cricketers have invested money in Stanford while the Ministry of Finance has confirmed that one major institutional investor, which Business Page suspects is either a commercial bank or an insurance company, has placed funds with the Stanford group. The Ministry has told the press that it is “monitoring the situation” although quite what this means in the light of its handling of the Clico issue is hardly reassuring. We must not forget that there are thousands of Guyanese living in Antigua and it is a fair guess that many of them would have had their savings in Stanford’s bank. If the government is truly monitoring the situation it should immediately send a high-level representative to Antigua to represent the interest of those persons.

At some time we will have to confront the threats to small countries by rich investors and oligarchs who can bribe, cajole and threaten to get what they want. The view that these people are here to save us must by now be surely mistaken. So too is the view that we are insulated from the world economic crisis. Our own politicians need to stop feeding us with their own form of garbage.

Clico update
Chairman of the National Insurance Scheme has told the press, more than a month after the news of the failure of Clico Investment Bank in Trinidad and Tobago that he is uncertain about the extent of the exposure of the NIS to the local Clico company. That is amazing and dangerous when in the same breath he estimates that the exposure can be as much as $6 billion.

Business Page has for two weeks been trying to obtain confirmation from various members of the NIS Investment Committee of the value of the exposure and has written to the acting General Manager of the Scheme seeking confirmation. By arrangement the Commissioner of Insurance has also been written to with a list of several questions the answers to which would form the basis of next week’s Business Page. If Dr Luncheon is right and the exposure is around $6 billion, then potentially we could have some really serious problems since the Scheme’s viability will depend on the continued success of Clico Guyana. The consequences of a failure are simply too frightening to contemplate.

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Half year economic performance

The Guyana economy has performed reasonably well during the first half of the year according to Dr. Ashni Singh, Minister of Finance, and there is cautious optimism about the domestic economy for the rest of the year. This is according to the mid-year report presented to the National Assembly by the Minister on October 27, 2008. However, anyone with a serious interest in the economy and concerned about the several important omissions contained in the mid-year report should read the report in conjunction with the half-year report done by the Bank of Guyana and published on the bank’s website.

Driven by improved performances in agriculture, mining, engineering and construction, and services, the economy recorded a 3.8 per cent GDP growth during the first half of 2008, but still a sharp decline from the 5.8 per cent growth in the corresponding period of 2007. The Bank of Guyana – using that well-known oxymoron – reports that the manufacturing sector recorded negative growth, due partly to the high cost of inputs − fuel and imported raw materials, challenges to which the sector is no stranger.

2008.11.16_Chart1
Source: Bank of Guyana Half-year report 2008

Revenue and expenditure
On central government revenue and expenditure, the mid-year report presents some interesting information. Value-added and excise taxes were budgeted to increase by 12.8% from the $36.7 billion collected in 2007 to $41.4 billion in 2008. For the half-year actual collections amounted to $17.8 billion (43% of full year) compared with the $17.1 billion collected last year. On a period by period comparison these collections represented a marginal increase in value-added tax to $11 billion from $10.2 billion, although excise tax collections declined to $6.7 billion from $7 billion.

Internal revenue collections amounted to $19 billion in the first half of 2008 compared with $17.4 billion collected last year. The bulk of such revenue comes from a handful of companies, including the commercial banks, telecommunications companies and Banks DIH, DDL and DEMTOCO. Despite the many unincorporated businesses, the self-employed category pays less than one billion dollars in taxes, or just about 15% of the taxes paid by the employed persons.

While both reports indicate significant growth in key sectors, tax revenues have not risen correspondingly and one is left to wonder whether this is a case of generous tax concessions or continued tax evasion within key sectors.

But it is in relation to expenditure that the picture is particularly interesting. And while the Minister in his report did not discuss the table which contains several errors, it must now be a matter of speculation why only 38% of the full year budget has been expended in what the table itself describes as key sectors. Particular attention is drawn to the Health,

Infrastructure and Agriculture sectors where only 41%, 27% and 33% respectively, have been spent in the first half of the year. Are we going to see a mad and irresponsible rush to spend during the second half of the year, simply because the money has been allocated?

2008.11.16_Table1

Debt
The mid-year report deals very inadequately with external debt and omits completely any information on domestic debt which has been rising alarmingly over the past several years. The Bank of Guyana Report shows the stock of government’s domestic bonded debt increasing by 7.6 per cent, while its external public and publicly guaranteed debt rose by a whopping 16.8 per cent from end-June 2007.

The outstanding stock of government domestic bonded debt, which consisted of treasury bills, debentures, bonds and the CARICOM loan, amounted to G$74,223 million, an increase of 7.6 per cent from end-June 2007 and 7 per cent from end-December 2007 balance. The increase from one year earlier reflected the expansion in the stock of outstanding government treasury bills at end-June 2007.

Over the year July 1 2007 to June 30, 2008, the stock of outstanding public and publicly guaranteed external debt rose by 18.2 per cent to US$774 million. This increase reflected disbursements of US$45 million by the Inter-American Development Bank and the delivery of US$44 million credit by the Venezuela Petrocaribe agreement.

Employment
This very critical economic and social indicator once again fails to attract the attention of the Minister and again recourse has to be had to the Bank of Guyana Report which by its own admission is not based entirely on hard data. One has to wonder why the government continues to refer to labour surveys but yet the Ministry of Finance seems unable or unwilling to deal with the issue. While indicating that preliminary data indicated that public sector employment remained relatively stable, the Bank of Guyana reports some decline due primarily to factors such as resignation and retirement of employees.

The Bank of Guyana reported that while “data on private sector employment are sparse, there are indications that the growth sectors recorded higher levels of employment.” It went on to state that the mining, distribution as well as the engineering and construction sectors seem (emphasis mine) to be associated with increased employment.

It is interesting how the Bank of Guyana and the Ministry of Finance are so sure of the performance of the various sectors of the economy but cannot establish similarly reliable numbers on employment.

Inflation
Inflation has been one of the most disputed and massaged variables in the Guyana economy. Both reports indicate a 5.8% rate of inflation but again the Bank of Guyana is more informative even if no less controversial. The Minister of Finance attributes the increase mainly to food items, identifying cereals and cereal products as the principal contributors which are unlikely to be the main concerns of the average consumer. In fact in a typical food basket done monthly by Ram & McRae, Chartered Accountants, the price increase in food items over the six month period was 10.2%, compared with the Bank of Guyana figure for the food group of approximately 9%.

Conclusion
While the date on the Minister’s report is shown as September 12, in fact it was presented to the National Assembly on October 27, repeating a pattern of wrong dating by this Minister. Despite the additional time he took in presenting his report, the Minister chose not to address the serious global economic issues that surfaced in the third quarter, nor did he treat in any serious way his duty under the law to include in the report a list of major fiscal risks for the remainder of the fiscal year, together with likely policy responses that the government proposes to take to meet the expected circumstances.