Province buys computers, etc. from ‘sari sari’ store as inventory fails on over P138M worth of assets
And now for the bad news.
Property, Plant and Equipment (PPE) account of the Guimaras Provincial Government has “doubtful” value of over P138 million. Primarily comprised of unreconciled records between the General Services Office (GSO) here and that of the Accounting Office, the Commission On Audit (COA) is calling for an “accurate inventory.”
With validation made by State Auditors, the multi-million discrepancies “in records” could have been avoided though. This, as the COA noted the failure of the GSO and the province’s Inventory Committee to reconcile results of physical count of the furniture, fixtures and equipment with the province’s General Ledger.
Governor Felipe Nava, the COA in its report said, was concerned with the deficiency thus the decision to hire a surveyor to aide Guimaras “in assessing the true value and condition of all assets of the Province.”
Meantime, more multi-million management concerns on mandated “depreciation accounting” that COA feared resulted to overpayment of annual insurance premiums on the island-province’s fixed assets and buildings.
Valued over P82.1 million, COA said the Provincial Accounting Office must provide depreciation for all depreciable assets, reconcile the records then pay accordingly the insurance costs.
“The failure to provide depreciation overstated the PPE and the Government Equity Accounts, as well as the payment of insurance premiums which would be disadvantageous to the provincial government,” the COA noted.
And there is still more.
COA uncovered over P2.5 million in questionable purchases made by the Guimaras Provincial Government. All done via “shopping” minus government-mandated procedures, over P635,000 here was also procured from a non-bona fide supplier.
“Shopping” as mode of procurement had established safety nets for the protection of government money. The over P2.5 million “Guimaras shopping” was not within the bounds of said provisions which included shopping of 13 computers and accessories, 9 units of laptops and accessories, 7 units of digital cameras and 10 units of cellular phones.
Worse, in the earlier documents submitted by the province’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC), stated as mode of procurement was “public bidding.”
“However during the processing of the PR, the end-users requested the BAC to use shopping as the alternative mode…,” excerpts of the COA findings went. “PR” refers to the Purchase Request of the procurements made.
And to add up to the problem, the over P635,000 worth of said computers, laptops and digital cameras were purchased from a “sari-sari store.”
“Records further showed that the supplier’s total income declared for the year 2008 was only P75,000. Moreover, our visit to the purported place of business on the stated address disclosed that the business establishment was a grocery store and there was no business name indicated in the building to identify it. When we interviewed the son of the owner, he admitted that they sell groceries only,” the COA reported.