By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

No controls existed over the Ministry of Tourism’s “significantly large travel budget” for almost the entire duration of the 2007-2012 Ingraham administration, the Auditor-General has found.

Terrance Bastian and his team, in their 2012-2013 audit of the Government’s finances, found that no travel register for Ministry of Tourism officials was maintained after the previous database system crashed during the 2007-2008 fiscal year.

“The Ministry of Tourism has a significantly large budget for travel,” the Auditor-General’s report said. “However, auditors noted the following control weaknesses.

“Presently, no travel register is maintained. We were informed that the Ministry of Tourism had previously used a database system which crashed about five years ago.

“Since then, no record is kept as to the persons travelling, dates, destination and total cost of travel.”

The travel register would thus have been inoperative under both ministers of tourism during the Ingraham administration, Neko Grant and Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace.

The size of the Ministry of Tourism’s annual travel spending is not broken out in the Government’s Budget, which traditionally allocated a total between $65-$70 million to the Ministry.

However, given that much of its work is promotional in nature, and requires travelling to existing and potential source markets to meet with travel industry partners, the Ministry’s travel budget will run into multi-million dollar sums annually.

Calling on the Ministry of Tourism to “ensure that a travel register is maintained on a consistent basis”, the Auditor-General’s report also found that travel-related expenses were not being handed in and cleared within the 21 days required by policy.

And it suggested that Ministry of Tourism officials had been less than co-operative in responding to its audit requests.

The Auditor-General and his team attempted to review 40 of the Ministry’s contractual files, and two supplier files. Yet nine of the files first selected were not provided to them.

“Auditors reviewed the files and noted that 34 of the files did not have contractual agreements on them,” the report said. “Three of the six contractual agreements received were expired….

“Management should ensure that new contractual agreements are entered into as payments should not be made on expired contracts.”

The Auditor-General’s report, further dissecting the sample files, said 18 lacked the proper payment vouchers. And, despite asking for them, the Ministry of Tourism never provided its auditors with a list of all its contracts, including insurance agreements.

The report also found that three of the Ministry of Tourism’s five bank accounts lacked up-to-date reconciliations.

Elsewhere, the Auditor-General’s report also found problems with the Government’s lease of buildings for its operations.

“There is a significant number of leases that are expired and have been for a number of months,” the report said. “Staff at the [Accommodations] Unit expressed concerns to the auditors about the delayed process of securing a rental property for government agencies due to leases not being vetted in a timely manner.”

Probing further, the Auditor-General’s team selected a 23-strong sample of rental payments. “The following deficiencies were noted,” the report said.

“Nine of the rental agreements were not on accounts file, resulting in a scope limitation. In eight cases, payments were being made on expired rental agreements… There are lease agreements on file that are not signed and sealed by the Treasurer of the Bahamas.”

As for the Post Office Savings Bank, the Auditor-General’s report warned bluntly: “Weak internal controls allow a number of fraudulent activities to go undetected for long periods of time” within the organization.

No financial statements have been produced by the Post Office Savings Bank since 2002, while interest due on its 26,619 accounts has not been calculated annually since 2008.

The Auditor-General’s report said around 52 per cent of Post Office Savings Bank accounts were inactive, and the absence of a computer system meant deposits and withdrawals were done manually via pass books.

The Post Office Savings Bank is unable to determine the dollar value of both active and inactive accounts, while its failure to file financial statements means it is in breach of the law governing its operations.