BACOLOD City – A Commission on Audit report stating that the city government had unliquidated and unreconciled accounts of up to P1.3 billion in 2017 had the Office of the City Accountant seeking clarifications.
City Accountant Ma. Corazon Cardel will write the local COA office and ask the agency to shed light on the matter.
“We have not yet examined the content of the annual audit report of the COA,” she told reporters. “We have yet to request the COA [to explain] what that P1.9 billion [was about].”
“If it was [about] the cash advances of employees and officers as of December 2017, we’ve only recorded about P26 million,” she added.
Financial assistance worth P5,195,000 granted to six leagues/federations in previous years remained outstanding for over a year as of Dec. 31, 2017, the COA report stated.
This was “contrary to the terms in the memorandum of agreement,” so the implementation for the intended purpose “could not be ascertained and exposed the fund to possible loss,” it said.
According to the agency, the non-liquidation of utilized financial assistance resulted in an overstatement of “Other Receivables” account, affecting the fair presentation of financial statements.
Moreover, the COA said P2,600,000 in fund transfers and financial assistance to barangays in 2017 and P6,794,757.28 in fund transfers in previous years remained unliquidated even though the purposes or activities had already been implemented or completed.
Also, advances for officers and employees and special disbursing officers that accumulated to P32,227,227.62, and financial assistance to 45 nongovernment organizations/people’s organizations worth P27,824,576.89 remained unliquidated, too, said the COA.
Furthermore, state auditors said the General Service Officer failed to update entries in the Property, Plant and Equipment (PPE) cards that resulted in the non-reconciliation of account balances shown in the Annual Physical Inventory Report at P669,023,577.70 and in the financial statements and subsidiary ledgers maintained in the City Accountant’s Office amounting to P730,429,634.6, thus rendering the correctness of PPE account balances as of Dec. 31, 2017 doubtful.
In addition, the Construction in Progress (CIP) balance of P408,092,825.21 based on City Accounting records differs from the amount of CIP projects reported by the City Engineer’s Office (P17,648,074.79) due to the delay in the latter office’s submission of the report on completed projects and the absence of regular reconciliation between the two offices, said the COA.
Cardel believed the discrepancies that state auditors have found were “not only [under] the Evelio Leonardia administration” and could cover the terms of Monico Puentevella and Luzviminda Valdez as well.
She also clarified that unliquidated accounts of the current administration could not have reached more than a billion considering the “accumulated accounts.”/PN
