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CCNTV6
  • 2 years ago
Has the time come to revise the law to place some sort of penalty on state enterprises for the filing of late financials? The question was asked by Senator Wade Mark, the Chairman of today's Public Accounts Enterprises Committee as it examined the audited financials of the National Petroleum Marketing Company Limited.
Transcript
00:00 Chairman of the Public Accounts Enterprises Committee Wade Mark was not
00:04 pleased with NP and the company's non-adherence with the Companies Act and
00:09 State Manual on State Enterprises in submitting its audited financial
00:15 statements in a timely manner. The law says you have to publish. Why it is NP
00:28 has shown contempt for the Parliament of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
00:37 State enterprises are required by practice to submit financial statements
00:42 four months after the close of the year along with copies of management letters
00:47 issued by auditors. Parliament Secretariat only received financial
00:52 statements up to 2020. Chairman Mark was not willing to accept NP's explanation
00:58 that the backlog was due to the time auditors had NP waiting as they dealt
01:04 with other clients. We cannot take that as an excuse. No external auditing firm
01:12 can tell you you are paying them handsomely for their work. They are not
01:18 doing it free. So they can't tell you they have too much work and you have to wait
01:24 your turn. Get rid of them. If they cannot deal with you, fire them. The tardiness of
01:30 not just NP but other state enterprises in submitting their financials appeared
01:36 to spark the ire of Senator Mark. I am wondering if the time has not come for
01:44 us to recommend a change of the law because I feel that if this thing carried
01:53 penalties and sanctions in terms of fine, in terms of confinement, you know we
02:02 would get our reports on time. Such delays he explains affect taxpayer
02:08 accountability and recourse. If there are irregularities, if there is for instance
02:15 negligence, if there is fraud, if there's corruption, there's something called the
02:21 statute of limitation which is four years. I know in criminal matters it goes
02:28 beyond four years but if you have to take action against somebody in any
02:35 state enterprise, you can't do it because the four-year period is up. Based on the
02:40 document before the committee, NP suffered a loss of 23 million in 2017,
02:45 7 million in 2018 and 46 million in 2019. Is National Petroleum financially
02:54 bankrupt or possibly bordering on insolvency? Absolutely not chairman. In
03:05 addition to its hefty bills, the committee learned that 2019's loss was
03:10 due to paying remittances for wage negotiations. NP operates on very very
03:17 slim margins which are dictated by the government and through the Ministry of
03:21 Energy. So that we'll always be in you know in a particular place. I want to
03:28 also say that since 2016 we have not gotten a cent in PSIP funding yet every
03:35 year we undertake significant capital expenditure to the tune of 30-40 million dollars every year.
03:40 NP, the chairman explained, has been profitable since 2022.
03:46 Urvashi Tamari, Rubin Rhein, TV6 News
03:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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