Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said yes­ter­day that mak­ing de­posits to the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) with­in one month of the end of the quar­ter is “vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble” and may re­quire an amend­ment to the HSF Act.

Im­bert was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, dur­ing which he was asked to com­ment on a state­ment made by Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass in the of­fi­cial au­dit of the 2023 fi­nan­cials of the HSF.

Ram­dass was ap­point­ed as the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al on No­vem­ber 15, 2023, and signed off on the HSF fi­nan­cials on No­vem­ber 29, 2023. She act­ed in the job be­tween Ju­ly 10 and No­vem­ber 14, 2023, when the pre­vi­ous Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Lorel­ly Pu­jadas, was on pre-re­tire­ment leave.

Re­port­ing on oth­er le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments in her au­dit of the 2023 fi­nan­cial state­ments of the HSF, Ram­dass wrote, “The tim­ing of the de­posit of US$182,213,278 is in con­tra­ven­tion of the re­quire­ments of the Act.”

Sec­tions 13 (2) and 13 (4) of the HSF Act re­quires that de­posits to the Fund “shall be made no lat­er than the end of the month fol­low­ing the quar­ter in re­spect of which the de­posit was cal­cu­lat­ed ... For the pur­pos­es of this sec­tion quar­ter means a three-month pe­ri­od end­ing De­cem­ber 31, March 31, June 30 and Sep­tem­ber 30.”

That has been in­ter­pret­ed to mean that a de­posit to the HSF for the quar­ter end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022, should have been made by the end of Oc­to­ber 2022.

In her au­dit re­port, Ram­dass wrote that the US$182.2 mil­lion de­posit was made on De­cem­ber 23, 2022, and re­lat­ed to the quar­ter Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber 2022 “and the date of cal­cu­la­tion pro­vide by the Min­istry of Fi­nance was Oc­to­ber 26, 2022.”

Yes­ter­day, Im­bert said, “The ac­tu­al (en­er­gy) rev­enue can­not be de­ter­mined un­til three to four months af­ter the end of the fis­cal year. That’s be­cause re­ceivers of rev­enue have to re­port and it is im­pos­si­ble for every­body to re­port on the 30th of Sep­tem­ber. Some peo­ple are still re­ceiv­ing rev­enue on Sep­tem­ber 30.

“So that if one has to de­posit the sur­plus rev­enue for the fis­cal year in­to the HSF, and you are re­quired to do it vir­tu­al­ly im­me­di­ate­ly, by de­f­i­n­i­tion it is go­ing to be in­ac­cu­rate be­cause you don’t know what the ac­tu­al sur­plus rev­enue is.

“So that, the whole ques­tion of de­posit­ing the sur­plus rev­enue vir­tu­al­ly im­me­di­ate­ly is re­al­ly an im­pos­si­bil­i­ty.

“The Act ap­pears to have some am­bi­gu­i­ty in it. And if you have been study­ing the news­pa­pers, which I am sure you have, you will see that it is even ref­er­enced in the (2023 HSF an­nu­al) re­port that you are re­fer­ring to that there is some am­bi­gu­i­ty there and per­haps the Act should be amend­ed.”

When it was point­ed out to Im­bert that the HSF Act re­quires de­posits one month af­ter the end of the quar­ter, Im­bert said, “It is al­most im­pos­si­ble be­cause the clos­ing of ac­counts is re­quired by Jan­u­ary 31. The whole point of the au­dit­ing of the fi­nan­cial year 2023, the whole ques­tion of sec­tion 24 of the Ex­che­quer and Au­dit Act is the dead­line for sub­mis­sion of in­for­ma­tion on the pub­lic ac­counts is Jan­u­ary 31, of any year. That’s four months af­ter the end of the fi­nan­cial year.

“It is vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble and is some­thing that will have to be looked at.”

Im­bert al­so point­ed out that the Bud­get Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Fi­nance is con­stant­ly re­vis­ing its rev­enue num­bers.

“When the bud­get is de­liv­ered, you will have an es­ti­mate. A month of two lat­er you have a re­vised fig­ure. Then three months lat­er, you have an ac­tu­al fig­ure.”

In an af­fi­davit filed in court in sup­port of her law­suit against the Gov­ern­ment, Ram­dass al­leges that on Jan­u­ary 15 at 2:37 pm, Im­bert called her per­son­al mo­bile and de­mand­ed that she change the ad­verse ref­er­ence in her re­port on the HSF.

She said she found Im­bert’s tone and at­ti­tude to be “ar­ro­gant and threat­en­ing.”