AfricaPress-Tanzania: CONTROLLER and Auditor General (CAG) has exposed massive irregularities, violation of rules and mismanagement in various development projects valued at 2.31tri/- during the financial year 2018/19.
Mr Charles Kichere, the newly-appointed CAG said in his report into 90 projects implemented in the financial year 2018/19 targeting agriculture, education, health, mining, energy, transport, water and social sectors that disobedience to state and international rules had occasioned loss of billions of shillings.
Citing unpaid contractors’ claims, Mr Kichere said the government owed the contractors an outstanding 794.09bn/-.
Unfortunately, due to the Ministry of Finance and Planning delay in releasing the funds, it has accumulated additional interest charges of 224.02bn/-.
The interest charge of the previous financial year, 2017/18 was down to 57.09bn/-.
“Unpaid contractors claims now stand at 1.03trn/- this includes penalties and compensation to affected people totaling 13.02bn/-,” read part of the report.
According to the annual audit report into development projects implemented last financial year, the CAG review into holdings accounts at the treasury exposed unspent balance amounting to 25.16 million US dollars (about 58.2bn/-) from 12 projects.
“Most of these projects were closed some years back and the balances had been outstanding for a period of up to seven years without being utilised,” the CAG said in the report.
He was, however, quick to suggest that “the underutilisation of monies for long period exposes the funds to the risk of being used for unintended activities.”
At least 6.51bn/-worth of procured goods and services had no electronic fiscal device receipts from 58 projects contrary to the income tax (electronic fiscal devices) regulations of 2012.
Failure to demand EFD receipts, according to CAG not only increases the risks of tax evasion, but also undermines government efforts to increase tax collection.
“My review noted that 39 project implementers did not remit to TRA withholding taxes amounting to 3.86bn/-.
The Tax Act of 2004 directs deduction of withholding tax from suppliers of goods, services, and effecting remittance to TRA seven days after the end of each month,” read part of the report.
This means the government missed its revenue from the uncollected taxes. The five years’ development plan phase II outlined four key interventions to enable the country industrializes and transform its economy and society.
The interventions included growth and industrialisation; Fostering human development and social transformation; Improving the environment for enterprise development; and getting implementation right.
The CAG reports detailed further that some projects were, however, not implemented either for insufficient release of funds or by non-contribution of government share in such projects co-financed by development partners.
The document published here indicated that there was under-release of at least 164.23bn/-by both the treasury and the development partners.
Likewise, the government only released 3.33bn/-or 28 per cent of the required 11.78bn/-contribution to finance two development projects
