The Auditor General's Office has stated that the MVR 31.9 million received as revenue by the Transport Ministry in 2021 cannot be verified as an accurate revenue figure.
The audit of the Transport Ministry’s 2021 financial statements, as well as the audit reports for 2019 and 2020 released today by the Audit Office, stated that various systems were used to record the ministry's revenue, and issues such as the absence of reports in those systems, lack of complete reconciliation, non-sequential receipt numbers, and omissions from reports were noted.
The audit states that because various issues were identified within the systems used to record the ministry's revenue and the controls established for managing those systems, the total revenue received by the ministry could not be verified.
The audit noted that the ministry uses "ePortal" as the main portal for receiving revenue, which began in 2020 due to COVID-19 to facilitate documentation and payment collection for various land and sea transport services. Payments through that portal are collected via the BML gateway.
Even though the ePortal was used to collect revenue, the audit stated that the ministry verified the total amount of money received as revenue during the year using BML gateway reports. It noted that these were reports requested from BML every month, but the ePortal and BML gateway reports were not being reconciled. Daily and monthly revenue reports are not generated from that portal.
The report said that the ministry relies on the BML gateway report instead of the ePortal to verify and reconcile the total annual revenue. Furthermore, journal vouchers are approved and posted to the PAS (Public Accounting System) by relying on BML gateway reports instead of the ministry's system reports. Therefore, the audit stated that if the ePortal and BML gateway reports are not reconciled, it cannot be verified whether all transactions conducted through the ePortal are included in the BML gateway report.
The Matrix system is used to maintain records of the money received as revenue by the ministry. The audit was informed that this system is used solely for the ministry's purposes; however, it noted that before the ePortal was used, revenue was collected through the Matrix system and receipts were issued to service recipients via that system.
The report stated that the year in the receipt numbers issued by the ministry changes in the Matrix system to the year in which that receipt is re-generated. Additionally, it was noted that the date of the receipt also changes to the date it is printed.
The ministry also used a portal under the name of CRS. This is a system used by the ministry to collect revenue from harbor rent, light dues, and fees for vessels anchored within the harbor. The audit also noted that some transactions of the revenue collected through that system were not included in the total monthly revenue reports taken from the system.
The audit stated that portals such as CRS, used for receiving revenue and conducting various revenue-related transactions, should be portals from which information can be extracted in formats that facilitate financial accounting and reporting for other record-keeping purposes. As reports from that system can only be taken in PDF format and the portal contains a large number of transactions, reconciling the accounts is difficult.
The audit also noted that the year of the receipts taken from that system changes, and the year of the reports also changes.
The report stated that since the receipts issued by the ministry are system-generated, if the date and the year in the receipt number change, it cannot be verified which financial year's revenue that receipt relates to.
Regarding such matters, the audit stated that the totals of the figures from the systems had not been calculated to verify the total revenue received by the ministry during the financial year. Therefore, the audit stated that the MVR 31.9 million included in the Public Account System and the financial statements as money received as state revenue in 2021 cannot be verified as an accurate figure.
The report advised making the portals used for receiving revenue into portals designed in a way that daily and monthly revenue reports can be extracted. Additionally, in preparing financial statements, it was instructed to reconcile records after comparing the total revenue collected through the portals with the amounts deposited into the bank as revenue to verify the amount of revenue received by the ministry.
The Audit Office has instructed to bring the necessary changes to the systems so that the date and receipt number of the system-generated receipts do not change.
