JEDDAH: Accumulated unpaid loans to be retrieved by Saudi Arabia’s public lending organizations from individuals, companies and institutions amounted to SR44 billion by 2006, according to a report issued by the General Auditing Bureau yesterday.
The bureau made this statement while clarifying media reports that said the Shoura Council took up the issue of the wastage of SR109 billion of public money. The media reports were based on the bureau’s annual report for 2006 that was presented to the consultative body.
The bureau pointed out that unpaid loans to the tune of SR44 billion accounted for part of the SR109 billion public money mentioned in the report. It emphasized the need to step up efforts to recover this huge amount in order to give loans to other deserving beneficiaries.
The loans were paid by the state-owned Real Estate Development Fund, the Industrial Development Fund and Agricultural Development Fund.
Shoura members demanded that the head of the bureau should be called in to clarify how the misappropriation of such a huge amount took place and what needed to be done to prevent the waste of public money. The members blamed lack of proper supervision and investigations against government departments for the unauthorized spending.
The bureau pointed out that government departments had given SR25.30 billion to their branches for specific purposes. “In accordance with the law, this amount is to be settled by the end of every year and should not be pushed forward to the next year. Despite the efforts of the bureau and the Finance Ministry, such amounts are accumulating,” it said.
Of the total, an amount of SR25 billion was spent by government departments by transferring amounts from one area to another without following budgetary regulations, the bureau said. “This resulted in the nonimplementation of several important projects that were on the priority list,” it said. Misappropriations to the tune of 50 to 100 percent were found during 2002 to 2006.
As much as SR20 billion, owed to others, have remained with the state because of different reasons. “We have been instructing all government departments to pay such trust amounts to their owners so that the amounts would not be a burden on the treasury.”
The bureau said it had noticed that SR315 million was paid in 2006 in violation of regulations and urged measures to return it to state coffers, adding that only SR31 million of the amount had been repaid so far. “In light of the above, it has become clear that all these amounts are different in nature and cannot be joined together to say they were lost or that they represent wasted public money,” the statement said.
