DailyMirror:
All past and present heads of loss-making semi government commercial ventures will be summoned before the Committee On Public Enterprises (COPE) of Parliament to explain how and why their respective establishments were running at a loss, COPE Chairman and Minister D.E.W.Gunasekara said yesterday.
“It is a matter of serious concern that a large number of state owned ventures have failed as a result of financial and administrative mismanagement running into billions of rupees. This has severely affected the economy as almost all these government owned companies, corporations, boards and authorities survive on the funds obtained from the Treasury.
Unfortunately, there was no one to hold accountable for the financial losses and mismanagement. Therefore, as the chairman of the COPE, I have decided to summon all past and present chairmen, board of directors and finance managers / directors to explain the failure of their respective establishments not withstanding whether they hold office at the moment or not,” Minister Gunasekara told the Daily Mirror.
Minister Gunasekara added that the COPE investigations had revealed that chairmen and board of directors have acted without any discipline and had wasted funds of their establishments unhindered on various unsuccessful projects without going into feasibility studies or checking the financial viability.
“There was no one to hold accountable for the loss after the chairmen and board of directors were changed. The scenario would be different here onwards as the COPE will summon and question whether they hold office or not right now about the failed commercial ventures,” he stressed.
The COPE has already investigated 54 audit reports of public enterprises out of a total of 249. The COPE expects to investigate all reports before the end of this year. However, only 12 audit reports had been investigated in 2009.
The COPE has made it obligatory from this year that heads of public enterprises who are permitted for private auditing to obtain an audit report from the Auditor General as well before their annual financial report is submitted to the COPE in order to tighten the financial discipline among the public enterprises.
Minister Gunasekara lamented that a number of public commercial ventures have failed to submit their annual audit reports to the COPE on time. Some establishments have failed to submit the audit reports even for 2008, which have badly reflected on their performance.
Minister Gunasekara said the Moratuwa University remained the best managed institution in 2009 while the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation wasas the worst managed and loss making commercial venture under the government.