Auditor General David Dennis today released his latest audit report on the controversial $309 million Economic Stimulus Package (ESP) the last government came up with in 2020 to address the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the Solomon Islands economy.
The ESP initiative, according to former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare, would be guided by two basic principles:
- To address the immediate impacts of COVID-19.
- Build capacity of the economy to quickly recover and grow over the short and medium term.
But the audit report released today found major weaknesses in the administration of the ESP, and lack of transparency in the way it was managed.
“The ESP lacked underlying legislative or procedural guidance for issuing grants on the scale involved with this Fund,” Dennis said.
“That’s because it had insufficient resources needed to adequately receive, process, pay and document the thousands of applications, leading to weaker internal controls,” he added.
“In relation to the conduct of this audit, my team were faced with numerous delays, including slow delivery of missing documentation and, in some cases, only forthcoming after the draft audit report had been shared.
“My team also had payments to undertake audit fieldwork being blocked, raising serious concerns about the impingement of the independence of my office.”
Dennis said his team also found lack of transparency about who received funding and what it was received for, inadequate documentation and reporting across the ESP and in many cases documentation to support the validity of actions and transactions were not available.
“This area remains a concern across Government, which requires urgent attention,” he said.
Furthermore, Dennis said there are also areas in which non-compliance and potential of fraud was evident, with many payments being signed for by Government officials on behalf of beneficiaries without documented authorisation, including payments totalling over $6 million being signed for by one officer.