Malawi gov't overdraws over 21 million dollars

The latest audit of national accounts has revealed that the Malawi government in the 2003/4 financial year overdrew 3 billion kwacha (over 21 million U.S. dollars) from both the consolidated advances and deposit accounts, Nation Online of Malawi reported Saturday.

Acting auditor-general Lantone Gomani described the overdrawal as a breach of statutory provisions.

Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) Chairperson Respicious Dzanjalimodzi said earlier this week that his committee received Gomani's report and will at the end of this month summon the controlling officers to explain the transactions.

Gomani said the overdrafts from the consolidated deposit account impacts on the recurrent budgets of individual ministries once they settle the overdrawn accounts.

The 2004 audit of the government accounts is the latest so far as there are no audit reports covering years between 2005 and 2006.

Former finance minister Friday Jumbe said he cannot remember off hand why government overdrew from the consolidated advances and deposit accounts because it happened some time back.

Gomani, who released the 2004 audit of national accounts to parliament last month, said Monday that the government is only allowed to use 450 million kwacha (about 32 million dollars) from the consolidated advances account but ended up overdrawing 350 million (about 2.5 million dollars).

Gomani said that a consolidated advances account is an account Treasury allocates to individual ministries to deal with personal advances of civil servants such as general purpose, education, emergency and motor vehicle advances while consolidated deposit accounts deal with donor funded development projects that do not appear in the main budget.

In the report Gomani said that "I inquired from the controlling officer whether corrective measures have been put in place to clear the overdrafts, but as of writing this report I had not received any reply".

When he was asked on Monday if he had now received a reply from respective controlling officers, Gomani said he had not.

On the consolidated deposit account which covers donor funded projects that do not normally appear in the national budget, Gomani said in his report that in terms of Treasury instructions ( Finance) deposit accounts are not supposed to be overdrawn.

The report reveals that the government overdrew about 2.7 billion kwacha (over 19 million dollars) from donor funded projects.

Gomani said it is now up to Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to summon the controlling officers to explain.

Source: Xinhua