Govt has failed to regularise use of lotto funds - Goolsarran
By Gitanjali Singh
Stabroek News
May 16, 2002
Despite a promise by President Bharrat Jagdeo on October 13, 2000 to regularise the spending of funds from the government's share of the lottery proceeds this has not been done to date.
Auditor General Anand Goolsarran in his report on the public accounts of 2000, which was completed on April 30, this year, said that despite an assurance from the government that supplementary estimates would be presented in the National Assembly to ensure parliamentary approval of the expenditure and recording in the public accounts of funds from lotto proceeds, this had not been done up to the time of his reporting.
In 2000, Jagdeo promised to regularise the use of lotto funds in deference to Goolsarran's position at the time that all public revenues must be paid into the Consolidated Fund and expenditure from lottery proceeds had to be appropriated through parliament. This would have included the use of lotto funds in the President's Youth Choice Initiative under which many projects have been financed.
Goolsarran, in his report last month, said that between 1995-2000 $1.45 billion was received by the government from the Guyana Lottery Company and payments totalling $654.2 million were made. None of these resources spent was voted by parliament.
Of the sum used, $192 million was spent by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports on Mash activities and the upgrading of sports facilities; $13.8 million by the Guyana Defence Force to rehabilitate its sports ground; $36 million by the Civil Defence Commission to purchase tractors and trailers; $11 million by the Ministry of Human Services to rehabilitate the Help & Shelter Building; $41.5 million by the Office of the President to rehabilitate State House; $37.4 million in Regions Two, Three and Eight to rehabilitate sports facilities; $18 million by the Office of the President to rehabilitate the Teaching Service Commission building, $6 million by the Ministry of Information to establish a video library; $1 million by the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast the Olympic Games and $13.5 million in directors' fee and assistance to other organisations.
The Auditor General's concerns are that amounts are being paid from the Government Lotteries Fund bank account No. 3119 to meet public expenditure without parliamentary approval. This account was established in 1995 to receive the government share of the proceeds of the lottery (24% of the gross revenues of the Guyana Lottery Company).
Goolsarran holds the view that such proceeds are public revenues, which ought to be paid over to the Consolidated Fund in accordance with Section 17 of the Finance, Audit and Administration Act (FAA), which also stipulates that any public expenditure must be approved by parliament through the requisite appropriations.
The government, in 2000, had held to the position that the Government Lotteries Act of 1963 sanctioned the government's use of its share of the lotto proceeds, but Goolsarran said that the FAA superseded this and Jagdeo then gave a commitment to regularise the use of the funds from lotto proceeds.