Former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran says that the overdraft on the Consolidated Fund – the state’s main account – is vastly understated.
In his weekly column in the January 4th edition of Stabroek News on the 2019 report of the Auditor General on the public accounts, Goolsarran queried the veracity of the figures.
He noted that the Statement of Assets and Liabilities of the Government showed that the Consolidated Fund was overdrawn by $124.288 billion as of 31 December 2019. Further, at the end of 2017, the overdraft was $155.795 billion, a reduction of $31.507 billion despite the fact that Government recorded fiscal deficits of $27.286 billion and $29.925 billion for the years 2018 and 2019, as per the Minister of Finance’s end-of-year reports.