AG gives bad verdict on land acquisition fund

Auditor General Junias Kandjeke has given an adverse audit opinion on the financial accounts of Government’s Land Acquisition and Development Fund, which has N$190 million for buying commercial farms for resettlement, but only bought farms worth N$1,92 million in the 2008-09 financial year.

‘An adverse opinion is being expressed due to income from interest misstated in 2008-09 by N$2,52 million and in 2007-08 by N$1,84 million,’ the Auditor General stated. Another reason for the damning verdict is that ‘stale and cancelled cheques in 2008 of N$2,38 million and N$17 854 in 2009 were disclosed as expenditure with the result that the expenditure was overstated and the bank balances thus understated by these amounts.’ The private company the AG’s Office had contracted for the audit corrected the mistakes. The AG’s report on the Fund for the last two financial years combined was tabled in Parliament last week.An adverse audit opinion means that the financial figures do not reflect the true and real financial position of a company or an entity. According to international definitions, an adverse audit opinion is ‘the worst’ an AG can issue.For the 2003 to 2006 financial years the Fund received an unqualified audit opinion because thousands of dollars in expenditure could not be verified. The Land Acquisition and Development Fund was created ten years ago and the funding allocated by Government to buy commercial farms for resettlement is administered through it by the Lands Ministry. The annual land tax collected from commercial farmers is also paid into this Fund.Although the Fund bought farms worth N$72,7 million in the 2006-07 financial year and for N$81,6 million in the 2007-08 year, only N$1,92 million were spent on buying farms in the 2008-09 FY, the audit report revealed.Income from land tax, which commercial farmers paid in the same review period, came to N$24,2 million (2006-07 FY), N$28,9 million (2007-08) and N$26,1 million (2008-09). For those three years, the Fund received N$50 million annually from Treasury to buy farms.By March 31 2009, the Fund had N$80 million investments at a local bank and another amount of N$110 million lying idle in a call account at the same bank. ‘Government never misses an opportunity to state in public that the land reform allegedly moves at a snail’s pace and that the willing seller, willing buyer policy apparently does not work. ‘Yet it is Government itself which is extremely slow in issuing waivers to those farmers who could sell to buyers from a previously disadvantaged background,’ a farmer told The Namibian over the weekend.’That Fund now has N$190 million in cash but it appears not to be utilised for the purposes it was allocated, namely buying farms to accelerate the land reform process.’Government wants at least 15 million hectares to have changed from white ownership to previously disadvantaged Namibians by 2020. So far nearly 6 million hectares have changed ownership. The Lands Ministry intends to merge the two existing laws on land, the Commercial Land Reform Act and the Communal Land Reform Act. The Ministry held several regional workshops in the country over the past two weeks. These were supposed to be in preparation for a national workshop in Windhoek on the merger of the two laws on March 1, but according to the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) television news on Saturday, the national conference was suddenly postponed indefinitely. Attempts to obtain comment from the Ministry were unsuccessful.