WITH DEFICIENCES OF VIEW
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The Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova (CoARM) examined on December 13, the Compliance Audit Report of the management of public assets (including subsidies) by public institutions in the field of quality infrastructure during 2020-2021.
The dynamics of world economic evolution, as well as the importance of the globalization process, inevitably conditions the need to harmonize the regulatory systems and the related infrastructure, to promote production and trade at the global level. The optimization of technical regulations depends very much on the quality infrastructure, the key elements of which are the following: standardization, inspection and accreditation, certification and tests (for the verification of parameters in laboratory conditions).
Ensuring the organization and coordination of standardization activities, metrology and metrological supervision, accreditation and compliance assessment, technical regulation, industrial security, market supervision, consumer protection at the national level, is the mission of the Ministry of Economy, and the activities in the field of quality infrastructure are carried out by: the Institute of Standardization of Moldova, the National Institute of Metrology, the State Inspectorate for the Supervision of Non-Food Products and Consumer Protection (successor in rights of the Agency for Consumer Protection and Market Surveillance) and the National Accreditation Center of the Republic of Moldova, in which the Ministry of Economy has the quality of founder.
The patrimony managed by public institutions in the field of quality infrastructure belongs entirely to the state and, in terms of existence and material composition, constituted at the end of 2021 – 37269.13 thousand lei with a decrease compared to the previous period of 2841.29 thousand lei.
The lists of personnel of the audited public institutions were drawn up and approved in accordance with their organizational charts, according to which, the effective limit approved as of December 31, 2021, was 180 units, of which 136 units were actually employed.
According to the provisions of the State Budget Law, public institutions in the field of quality infrastructure were allocated financial means in the form of subsidies in the following ratio: 33382.8 thousand lei for the year 2020 and respectively 35022 thousand lei for the year 2021.
According to the commitments undertaken by the Republic of Moldova towards the World Trade Organization and taking into account the need to harmonize national legislation with the requirements of the European Union, as well as to ensure an adequate level of the quality of domestic products, in 2012 some measures were taken to reform the quality infrastructure system, and as a result, some changes have occurred in the structures involved in the management of the domain. This is how the public institutions the National Institute of Metrology, the Standardization Institute of Moldova and the National Accreditation Center of the Republic of Moldova (MOLDAC) were created on a self-financing basis.
As a result of the audit activities, it was revealed that the results of the inventory within the public institutions in the field of quality infrastructure indicate only the establishment of the factual and written existence of the assets under their management, the unused and fully amortized assets not being identified, not properly evaluated, not scrapped, not transferred to other entities and, therefore, not being taken rigorous relevant managerial decisions.
The accumulated audit evidence, related to the management of revenues, shows that the actions undertaken in the period 2020-2021 by the management of public institutions did not fully ensure the prudent and compliant management of its revenues, not all reserves in this field being capitalized.
The major share, in the total revenues of public institutions, was issued for funding from the state budget (subsidies), for the development of the quality infrastructure and consumer protection sector, according to the main development objectives and directions, divided by priorities in the proportion of 78% (33382.8 thousand lei) for the year 2020 and 79% (35022 thousand lei) for the year 2021.
Thus:
- the pricing system for services provided within public institutions in the field of quality infrastructure is outdated and is to be reoriented on real costs and applicable principles;
- the lack of elaboration and the lack of application of internal regulations did not ensure the full accumulation of revenues from the provision of services, which conditioned the bearing of unjustified expenses for the remuneration of the people involved in the process of providing services.
Therefore, the audit concluded that in correlation with the established basic principles related to ensuring the financial stability of public institutions, efficiency and continuous development, recovery of the costs incurred for the provision of services, the need to update and focus on real costs of the tariffs related to the services provided in the sphere of standardization and metrology is denoted.
The findings related to the use of financial resources, including subsidies, show that, in the period under audit, as a whole, with some room for improvement, the process in question was carried out in the appropriate manner, the legality of expenses being respected according to the activities carried out by public institutions. At the same time, some non-compliances related to the use of financial means during 2020-2021 were also admitted, expressed by the following:
- the management of the field of quality infrastructure requires a re-approach by formulating the strategic vision of the activity of public institutions in the medium term in relation to the Government Activity Program and MTBF;
- the accumulation of the significant number of unused annual leave days imposes legal obligations towards the staff of approximately 1176 thousand lei (including mandatory state social insurance contributions), which affects the financial stability of the audited institutions;
- the lack of application and lack of institution of internal policies, procedures and rules affects the staff remuneration process, generating in this way other risks in relation to and in terms of regularity, including the non-compliant establishment and calculation of material aid and single awards, the inappropriate increase in salary expenses related to staff not included in the states, but who provide services, the non-compliant registration of economic transactions related to the provision of translation services by the institution's employees, etc.
Therefore, the non-compliances in question resulted in the increase of personnel expenses, conditioning the risk of financial instability, failure to ensure the principle of transparency in the use of financial resources, untruthful reporting of information related to labor remuneration, and the deficiencies and non-compliances admitted in the operational activities did not significantly affect the good governance of the entrusted public patrimony.
In this context, the Court of Accounts offered recommendations for remedying the vulnerable points detected within the present audit, these being accepted by the Public Institutions in the field of quality infrastructure with assurances of implementation within the established terms.
