Cebu accountant says nothing amiss in Capitol records

CEBU — The provincial government of Cebu has maintained that the expenses incurred in the launching of the megadome design competition are already part of the construction cost.

Provincial accountant Marieto Ypil said that they are coming up with a position paper to refute the findings and recommendation of the Commission on Audit (COA) that the province erred in recording the P857,379.77 under the account "construction in progress" instead of debiting it to the account under "other maintenance and operating expenses."

In its annual audit report, the COA noted that the provincial government should have not debited the expenses in the megadome design contest to the account under construction in progress because the project has not yet started.

COA recommended that the provincial accountant prepare the necessary correcting entry, debiting the account from "other maintenance and operating expenses" and crediting the account to "construction in progress-Agency Assets-Megadome Project."

But Ypil maintains that the expenses were already part of the construction, saying that it has been a tradition in all government projects to hire consultants or architects in the making of the design

In the case of the megadome project, former Gov. Pablo Garcia decided to launch a design contest instead of the traditional bidding. Ypil said this was also done in some other local government units.

Ypil also said the equipment of the province are all accounted for and nothing was missing contrary to the audit report of COA.

He said the Provincial General Services Office did not submit the inventory of the entire properties to COA resulting to the discrepancies in their records.

The COA report revealed that there was equipment worth P51.8 missing from the inventory of the PGSO but it is actually recorded in the books of the provincial accountant.

Ypil said that the province should not also be faulted on the discrepancies in the inventory of the drugs and medicines and medical and dental supplies as transactions in prior years that were not carried over in the New Government Accounting System adopted by COA. — Freeman News Service