The Public Accounts Committee has raised concern with the delay in payment of Government subsidies by the Finance Ministry as well as the monitoring of the program.

Government annually selected a number of Statutory Authorities and Government Commercial companies of which subsidies would be granted through budgetary allocations.

Under the subsidy programme, the Ministry of Finance would detect non-compliance by entities in terms of capital contributions, eligibility criteria not followed, poor documentation and such other criteria.

In their Special Investigation report, the Public Accounts Committee highlighted that $3.5 million was handed by Government to the Fiji Development Bank in 2005, with 80 percent going to FDB, Housing Authority, Public Rental Board and Post Fiji with the remaining 20 percent going to Shipping Franchises, St. John’s and the Fiji Red Cross.

The Committee raised concern that there were payments of exchange losses through the subsidy allocation, failure to clearly define the intended outcome and objectives, lack of performance and the lack of addressing remedial actions for non compliance.

The Committee called for improvement in monitoring the subsidiary program because there was vagueness in reporting, no independent checks by the Finance Ministry to verify accuracy of reports and there was no policy for monitoring as well as no requirement for regular evaluation.