Errors, unbudgeted expenses, illegal payments and revenues at the very margin of the law are part and parcel of the 2015 accounts under Finance Minister Maria Luís Albuquerque in the Passos Coelho government.
The Court of Auditors found material errors in last year’s accounts and has listed its "reservations on the legality, accounting, internal control and financial correction" of the General State Accounts for 2015, noting that there are a number of shortcomings that have been identified in the past, some of them repeatedly, but which remained uncorrected.
The errors and deficiencies in the State accounts seem to be repeated year after year, even after the government and ministries have been told to clean up their act: 2015 was no different with the Court of Auditors simply being ignored to ensure they year-end figures looked better than they were.
Of the 98 recommendations made for 2015, many are recommendations that have been repeated.
Government departments have continued to spend amounts for which they are not authorised and overspending has become a tradition. Low budgets are set and then exceeded, the overspend coming from an annual ‘fudge figure’ of around €500 million which is always used up.
The misuse of this balancing budget is but one of the shortcomings pointed out by the Court of Auditors. Another is that, after the Official Public Accounting Plan was approved 19 years ago, the State’s accounts still do not yet have a balance sheet or an income statement, which means that the true financial situation of the State is not shown.
The President of the Court of Auditors, Vítor Caldeira, criticised the delay in the introduction of these basic accounting tools and the postponement of a new system of budgetary, financial and management accounting for public administrations.
This latter system, due to replace the previous one that was never adopted, was due start on January 1st last year, but its implementation was rather conveniently postponed.
"We do not have a complete idea of the situation the State is in, nor of the State’s assets,” said Caldeira, who must wonder why he bothers.
Comments
FIT FOR PURPOSE, doesn't come to mind when you consider all that is happening here. Seems to me Portugal will need another bail out, just to keep the feeding frenzy going. I actually cant understand how this is being allowed to continue..
Here there is no Balance Sheet and, if there isn't an Income Statement, there can be no Profit & Loss.
So it's not that there are "material errors" in the accounts; the fact is that there are no accounts at all.
Any director of a trading company who does not produce accounts would be jailed.
Sounds like a feeding frenzy with public funds.