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By LITO RULONA
Correspondent .

THE provincial board on Monday agreed to meet and discuss a Commission on Audit report that pointed out why auditors found the capitol’s financial statements doubtful.

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This was in response to a call made by provincial board member Jessa Mugot who brought the COA’s 2018 Annual Audit Report and the auditors’ recommendations to the provincial legislature.

Mugot, the provincial board’s assistant minority floor leader, said a letter from COA director for northern Mindanao Celso Vocal on the capitol’s 2018 financial statements.

She said the COA pointed out that the existence and accuracy of the the capitol’s local currency account amounting to P1,241.432 million, savings account amounting to P395 million, and time deposit account amounting to P7.399 million “remained doubtful due to non-preparation and non-submission of Bank Reconciliation Statements which was not consistent with the provisions of Section 74 of PD 1445 and Section 3.2 of COA Circular No. 96-011 dated October 2, 1996.”

Mugot said COA also stated that “the accuracy and existence of road assets with aggregate cost of P658.616 million could not be ascertained due to absence of physical count and appropriate information on the road map, compounded by various negative observations on the Report of the Local Road Network and the inclusion of maintenance expenses of not lesser than P109.847 million.” 

She said the COA also found an unreconciled balance amounting P9.731 million, and non-provisions of impairment loss on the accounts receivable of the capitol-owned Misamis Oriental Telephone System (Misortel) with general ledger balance of P188.707 million affected the reliability of the information conveyed in the financial statements.

Mugot said the current purchases of supplies and materials were directly expensed contrary to the standard, and the existence and accuracy of the reported balances of the inventories totaling P15.378 million could not ascertained. She quoted that COA as stating that these affected the fair presentation of the financial statements.

She also said state auditors also pointed out that the costing of accountable forms, plates and stickers inventory was “not in accordance with Philippine Application Guidance 2 of the International Public Sector Accounting Standard 12, thus affected the fair presentation of the financial statement.”

“This what I initially found from my quick reading of the 2018 Annual Audit Report. I hope we can check and act on this,” Mugot told the provincial board.

Mugot’s privilege speech was an offshoot of provincial board member Dexter Yasay’s earlier move to ask for updates on the previous legislative body’s operations.

Yasay’s call prompted the provincial board to instruct its secretary to secure a copy of the COA annual report. Copies of the COA report were subsequently distributed to provincial board members.

On Monday, Mugot said that “upon initial reading of the 2018 Annual Audit Report, I have not seen any significant COA findings as regards the operations of SP. I have, however read and noted initial findings and observations pertaining to the operations of the provincial government of Misamis Oriental as a whole as indicated by COA-10 regional director Celso Vocal in his letter.”

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