Africa-Press – Cape verde. The General State Account for the 2021 economic year was approved by parliament today, with votes against by the PAICV and abstention by the UCID.
The resolution received 30 votes in favor from the MpD, 20 against from the PAICV and four abstentions from the UCID deputies.
When justifying his vote, PAICV deputy Julião Varela stated that his party voted against taking into account “the illegalities, irregularities and intransparency detected and reported by the Court of Auditors in its opinion presented to the National Assembly.
“This State account for 2021 should be forwarded, by deliberation of parliament, to the Public Ministry”, he said, further arguing that the PAICV voted against the document to support the Court of Auditors which denounces in its opinion the absence of important legally binding documents such as the program files, which “made it difficult to analyze the accounts”.
According to Julião Varela, the similarity of the years prior to the General State Account 2021 does not reflect the true execution of the budgets of embassies and consular posts.
“The Court of Auditors notes that the amending budget for the year 2021 was 74.8 million contos and that, in the meantime, changes were made during the year that ended up increasing the budget by 2.3 million contos, reaching 77.1 million contos”, he indicated.
In other words, a situation that he classified as “unprecedented” in Cape Verde, as he maintained that legally permitted changes must never exceed the limits set in the budget.
In turn, MpD deputy Aniceto Barbosa declared that his party voted in favor of approving this bill for “many reasons”, having accused the PAICV of continuing its “wave of discrediting institutions”.
“And this time it is a fierce attack on the Court of Auditors, an institution that for 15 years has failed to reinforce power. We strengthened the Court of Auditors with the new statute, including with a favorable vote from PAICV, we allowed access to the Integrated Budget and Financial Management System”, he showed.
According to him, today the Court of Auditors can monitor the execution of the State budget in real time.
“In the General State Account, there is clearly no evidence of any discrepancy in tourism fund data, but PAICV continues to insist on this”, he assured, stating that there is no doubt of great improvements and gains in the transparency of financial management embassies and diplomatic missions.
Regarding the covid-19 accounts, he explained that in 2019-2020 the Government mobilized external resources worth 13.469 million escudos, of which 4.848 million escudos were used to finance pandemic projects, the management of which was what it is, and “a very visible result for all Cape Verdeans and for the whole world”.
The UCID, through deputy João Santos Luís, argued that they voted to abstain, taking into account that they asked some questions to the deputy prime minister, Olavo Correia, who did not fully clarify, trying to issue a certificate of incapacity to the deputies.
“Therefore, it is the Court of Auditors who actually carried out this analysis, it is not us and within the framework of the Court of Auditors’ opinion it is clear that, in 2017 the global debt was around 231 million, in 2018, 242 million, in 2019 , 257 million, 2020, 273 million and 2021, 305 million contos”, he explained.
However, he warned that this time they voted to abstain, giving the benefit of the doubt, but that if the 2022 bill comes with the same doubts, they will vote against it.
At the end of this second session in March, unanimous approval was given to the proposed law that establishes the legal regime relating to quality and safety in relation to the donation and harvesting of organs, tissues and cells of human origin, for the purposes of diagnosis or for therapeutic or transplant purposes, as well as the proposed Law that approves the Code of Military Justice (global final vote) by the 55 deputies present.
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