Treasury orders takeover of vehicles, houses of ministers who resigned
The Treasury has directed Ministry Secretaries to take over vehicles, houses furniture and office equipment of all ministers who have tendered their resignations.
The circular was issued after the resignation of 26 ministers by the Treasury. It was signed by the then Treasury Secretary S.R. Attygalle before he stepped down from office.
The circular was titled “Proper recording and reporting of all non- financial assets of the Government to prevent misplacement and misuse of public properties".
It stressed that proper documentation was an “obligatory function of all Heads of Government Agencies” to prevent misuse of public properties.
The circular was also addressed to all Secretaries of Ministries, Chief Secretaries to the Provincial Councils and Heads of Departments. It said they were required to report and update all non-financial assets owned by those institutions to Comptroller General's office.
An earlier circular issued in 2017 by Comptroller General's Office detailed non- financial assets as: lands, buildings, motor vehicles, machinery, bungalows, furniture and official equipment.
In the instance of resignation or removal of Secretaries to the Ministries or State Ministries, all non- financial assets including vehicles given for their use should be handed over to the officer in charge of those assets and such assets should be properly taken over, the circular said.
"The relevant officer and the officer in charge of the assets should ensure that the officer resigned or transferred does not take away any non-financial assets owned by that agency."
When it comes to change of ministerial portfolios or closure of government agencies, the circular referred to an earlier directive issued by the Department of Public Enterprises on handing over assets including vehicles given to the respective ministries.
Nearly a week has passed since the collective resignation of ministers, but there have been no reports of ministers handing over state resources and vehicles to their respective ministries.
Meanwhile, the Treasury has instructed ministries and heads of state institutions to suspend making any new commitments for projects that were not included in the budget and low priority projects which are currently under implementation with local funds.
Therefore, state institutions have been asked not to submit Cabinet Memoranda seeking funds for such projects in future while stressing that requests for additional allocations for new projects have been restricted by the Appropriation Act 2022.
A circular issued by the Treasury this week indicated that budget activities had become even more challenging since the fiscal space that existed at the beginning of the year had "further narrowed down as a result of the increase of public expenditure due to the provision of additional relief to the general public and government servants and to the difficulty in collecting government revenue."
The directive came in the wake of the Finance Minister signing the warrants in terms of the provisions of Article 150 ( 1) of the Constitution authorising withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund for the second quarter of 2022 to be able to incur the current expenditure.
Secretaries have been urged to pay attention to making appropriate decisions regarding the implementation of the planned projects as expected while tackling obstacles that may be arising out of the market conditions in view of the current situation.