{"id":74709,"date":"2018-02-12T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T19:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=74709"},"modified":"2018-02-12T12:00:44","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T19:00:44","slug":"sense-and-sensibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/02\/12\/sense-and-sensibility\/","title":{"rendered":"Sense and Sensibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

S. Navaratne\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

February 11, 2018, 10:01 pm<\/span>
\nOne feels somewhat disconcerted when a highly respected public servant makes comments that go\u00a0far and beyond his remit albeit in his view to further\u00a0yahapalana aims. The job of the Auditor General on matters relating to public debt is to provide to the public evidence based facts\u00a0after stringent auditing of the Government`s domestic and foreign debt. It should include full\u00a0disclosure of dummy accounts;\u00a0accurate Government borrowings\u00a0(foreign and local) to bridge the shortfalls of revenue to meet\u00a0Government current and capital expenditure;\u00a0aggregating\u00a0\u00a0figures of annual interest on government foreign and local borrowing separately and their impact on the rise in foreign and local debt annually,\u00a0and a breakdown of assets created\u00a0 from borrowings. Likewise it is within his remit to quantify the monetary losses from waste, corruption and named irregularities.<\/p>\n

In his recent media briefing, however,\u00a0the Auditor General made\u00a0a string of political,\u00a0economic, administrative assessments\u00a0including (i) the President should not be Finance Minister too, (ii)\u00a0questioning\u00a0so-called unproductive investments and (iii) the country faces an unprecedented massive debt crisis.<\/p>\n

\"article_image\"<\/p>\n

Do these assessments\u00a0undermine public perception of the role of the Auditor General? The allocation of Cabinet portfolios surely is a political decision best left to politicians.<\/p>\n

So, too, the government priorities on revenue and expenditure. It is a political decision, for example,\u00a0for Governments to decide how much the Government\u00a0borrows to construct public goods such as schools, hospitals, public toilets, playgrounds, roads for which there is little or no money return on investment.\u00a0These investments on public goods from borrowed money may not generate income but conform to government policy. It is disingenuous, moreover,\u00a0to say that there is nothing to show from borrowings for public goods even though\u00a0the current value of\u00a0these investments are deemed low for accountancy purposes.<\/p>\n

The Auditor General view that the country is in the midst of a “massive debt crisis” is an opinion, some would say an egregious exaggeration of the situation. The truth is that it depends on “unknown unknowns” such as\u00a0future\u00a0surpluses or deficits in the Budget, net inflows of foreign exchange on services such as remittances and tourism, and on FDI. Last but not least, the\u00a0pieces of family silver\u00a0such as the Hambantota port, the Mattala airport, the Trincomalee oil tanks and the Trincomalee port that the Prime Minister flogs\u00a0for dollars to pay off debts that have vastly increased in the past three years. Moreover,\u00a0intact for sale if required to pay off debts are the “Crown Jewels”, the Government holdings in banks and the financial sector\u00a0that are worth billions of dollars. Crisis? What Crisis?<\/p>\n

No one disputes that the forthcoming National Audit Bill should\u00a0provide wide-ranging powers to the National Audit Commission with regard to\u00a0accounting and auditing of government financial activities,\u00a0publicizing its shortcomings as well as\u00a0making recommendations for changes.\u00a0 Is there a case, however,\u00a0for the National Audit Commission and its staff to have license to go beyond evidence and facts and give opinions of\u00a0a political and\u00a0economic nature regarding public policy? Commonsense suggest that public officials should be discreet on matters outside their remit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S. Navaratne\u00a0\u00a0 February 11, 2018, 10:01 pm One feels somewhat disconcerted when a highly respected public servant makes comments that go\u00a0far and beyond his remit albeit in his view to further\u00a0yahapalana aims. The job of the Auditor General on matters relating to public debt is to provide to the public evidence based facts\u00a0after stringent auditing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}