This was disclosed by Minister of Finance Mr. Winston Jordon during an interview on Friday. The audit will target these agencies which, under the previous administration were allowed to remain as offline accounts, and did not follow the correct procedure of having their revenues placed in the Consolidated Fund.

Earlier the Finance Minister had stated that he had unearthed that the Consolidated Fund is heavy in over draft, whilst the previous government was maintaining several offline accounts.

The Minister explained that there are two Consolidated Funds, an older one that had “mothball, so to speak when we were bringing in IFMAS (Integrated Financial Management and Accounting Systems) back in 2003” and the current Consolidated Fund. He said that the older fund has an un-reconciled balance of about $46B. The two funds together have a balance of $71B but adjusting for offline accounts that really belong to government, there is about $60B overall, the Minister explained.

In terms of the offline financial records, the Ministry has already started closing accounts with balances that should have gone into the present Consolidated Fund. The Ministry is also examining other accounts and doing forensic audits for some funds like Petrocaribe, lotto, wildlife and those related to GGMC, GGB and NICIL.

The Minister said that once these audits are completed, the ministry will be better able to ascertain the balances in these offline accounts and will then transfer those to their rightful place which is the Consolidated Fund.