ABU DHABI // The federal audit report for 2012 reveals persistent and new breaches of budget rules, an FNC committee has found.
After reviewing the State Audit Institute’s report on the end-of-year accounts, the council’s finance committee found a number of breaches held over from 2010 and 2011.
Unlike previous years, however, they placed less blame on the Ministry of Finance after becoming accustomed to the explanations for the misspending.
Although unable to reveal much of the report, Ali Al Nuaimi (Ajman) said a common problem of federal authorities passing revenues to the local government instead of the federal budget continued for another year.
Other breaches, he said, were mostly linked to accounting and transactions.
The audit institute said the Ministry of Finance, which is in charge of drawing up the draft law on the closing of accounts every year, made a number of mistakes in accounting. But during a visit from a number of officials from the Ministry on Sunday, Mr Al Nuaimi said the ministry impressed them and responded to the audit institute’s concerns.
He said the ministry had also sent reasoning behind some breaches to the audit institute concerning the report but no conclusive meeting between them was held, leading to inaccuracies in the final report from the audit institute.
“On the other hand, through due diligence, we were assured the Ministry of Finance followed the system and held discussions,” he said. “We did call on the ministry to work with the audit institute to end all misunderstandings.”
He added that none of the breaches were “serious” or involved theft.
“Nothing to make us worried,” he said. “With all due respect to the audit institute, the procedures followed by the Ministry of Finance were good.”
He said while the audit institute gave a firm report, blaming the ministry in several instances, the committee went to the source and the ministry offered reassurances.
“The ministry took the right steps to address some of the breaches,” he said. “Some are out of the ministry’s hands and are related to other entities.”
Mr Al Nuaimi said there were no plans as yet to meet officials from other entities and federal ministries who violated spending rules.
He added that some ministries did not stick to the zero-based-budget, with some not utilising their 2012 budget which led to delayed projects “and affected the work of the government”.
Although two years ago members objected to passing the 2010 end-of-year closing accounts due to breaches, Mr Al Nuaimi said now members were “no longer new”.
“Today they all know how to discuss the budget,” he said. “We cannot deny that the Ministry of Finance is trying to improve and develop the system.”
The report will be discussed publicly next month at the FNC.
osalem@thenational.ae
