Second report on the first phase of the light rail transit system (LRT) construction, just released by the Commission of Audit (CA), reveals its estimated costs already climbed past 11 000 million patacas. As disclosed by CA, the Transportation Infrastructure Office (GIT, according to the Portuguese short form) applies a static investment method to estimate the costs, according to which only the current prices at the moment of the estimation are taken into account; it ignores the prices evolution along the construction’s period that a dynamic investment method would do. As a result, the estimate presented by GIT doesn’t reflect the real amount of financial resources needed for concluding the LRT, in the scale and specifications previously approved.

The Commission of Audit (CA) has just released the special audit report “Preparatory Committee for the Participation of Macau in the Shanghai World Expo”, in which CA reveals that Preparatory Committee’s financial management was deficient. In the beginning of the project, the Preparatory Committee didn’t use scientific methods to estimate the needed funds for Macau’s participation in the event and, then, the presented estimation didn’t cover all the expenses; after the Expo, the Preparatory Committee submitted a balance in which the results didn’t reflect all the expenses incurred. On the other hand, it didn’t take measures to finalize all “liquidation” works that it could carry out by itself and before the date of its own dissolution. When the dissolution took place, the legal subject of the initial acts also ceased to exist, so when the Financial Services Bureau (FSB) stepped in to close the process, it was force to go through additional and time consuming administrative formalities. The Preparatory Committee also didn’t implement measures to ensure the registration of all goods it acquired in the Macau SAR’s movable assets inventory and to register them by their acquisition value, in compliance with the applicable regulation. Upon the end of Shanghai Expo, on 31/10/2010, the Preparatory Committee started to dismantle the exhibition halls and initiated the “liquidation” works. In the meantime, it has been dissolved on 18/03/2011, according to the terms of the dispatch that had initially set it up, so it couldn’t conclude the “liquidation” works. A working group staffed by former employees of the Preparatory Committee was tasked to conclude the unfinished “liquidation” works, in conjunction with FSB. By dispatch of the Secretary for Economy and Finance issued in July 2011, the Macao Economic Services (MES) took up all unfinished works left by the Preparatory Committee.

Macau Foundation hasn’t fully complied with its own “Macau Foundation’s Internal Rules on Criteria for Analyzing and Granting Subsidies” in regard to auditing the associations whom it grants subsidies, discloses the just released performance audit report “Subsidies granted by Macau Foundation to associations”, prepared by the Commission of Audit (CA). The report also reveals that FM oversees the application of the subsidies by merely checking the accounts presented by the subsidies recipients themselves and conducting a deficient assessment on them; no procedures are carried out to verify the truth of the presented information, which poses significant control risks.

In the just released performance audit report “Recruitment and Training of Medical Interns” the Commission of Audit (CA) pointed out that the Health Bureau (“SS” according to Portuguese abbreviation) doesn’t practice long-term planning for its medical human resources and, as a result, the number of internships and total of interns trained declined considerably during the last 11 years. And the situation has been further aggravated by the suspension of the general and complementary internships in 2006 and 2005, respectively, resulting in an insufficient number of candidates qualified for medical career at SS.

The Commissioner of Audit Ho Veng On presented today (18 October) the “Audit Report on the Government Accounts 2010” before the Legislative Assembly, which met in plenary session. In the occasion, Ho Veng On referred that the Commission of Audit (CA), in compliance with the relevant norms, planned the audit and established procedures so as to obtain all audit evidence considered sufficient and appropriate; at the same time, a quality control system has also been put into practice. On those basis, CA examined comprehensively the accounts of the Special Administrative Region of Macau Government relating to 2010 (General Account), prepared and presented by the Financial Services Bureau, and expressed an “unreserved opinion”.

The special audit report “Operation and Management of Macao Science Centre Limited” released by the Commission of Audit (CA) revealed that Macao Science Centre Limited (Company) added qualitative considerations onto the scoring criteria laid down in the tenders’ documents for designing and setting up of exhibition rooms for the Science Centre, which altered the set of scoring criteria the Company and the bidders had earlier agreed upon and also unnecessarily put the Company in the road to future controversies with the bidders.

The special audit report “Light Rapid Transit System - First Phase” released by the Commission of Audit (CA) disclosed that the estimated investment previously announced by the Transportation Infrastructure Office (GIT, according to the Portuguese short form) doesn’t cover all the works related to the light rapid transit system (hereafter referred to as LRT). The investment amount of 7.5 thousand million announced in 2009 didn’t include 260 million patacas arising from works and services already acquired for the “main works” and relating installations and equipment. The absence of a total amount for the whole project hinders the cost control on upcoming works, would contribute to a continuing increase of the expenditure and may lead to uncontrolled expenses.

The Commission of Audit (CA) has released the performance audit report “Official Trips by Civil Servants”. The report points out that public departments manage their workers’ official trips each in its own way, giving rise to unjust situations, and have a weak perception of the need to implement controlling procedures and on saving public resources. The reports recommends that expenses on lodging and on food, covered by the daily allowances, should be examined and the rules regulating official trips which have been applied for over 20 years should be completely reviewed, focusing namely on the two regimes of granting daily allowances, in order that the public money would be spent properly.

The Commission of Audit (CA) has released a performance audit report, which is also the first environmental audit report in Macau, on the greening works carried out by the Macau Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM, in Portuguese abbreviation). The report reveals the lacking of specific and adequate legislation and an institutional framework in urban planning led the greening spaces and installations planning to be partial, limited to isolated and uncoordinated zones or construction projects; it also made the IACM’s planning and execution of the daily works on greening less effective.

The Commissioner of Audit Ho Veng On presented today (18) the “Audit report on the General Account 2009” at the Legislative Assembly, which met in plenary session. The audit report indicates the financial statements of the General Account of the Macau Government have been prepared according to the public accounting system and present in all material aspects the budget execution and the financial position as at 31 December 2009, based on receipts and payments for the year then ended.