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| July 19, 2003 | Saturday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 18, 1424 |
NHA clarifies position on balance sheet
ISLAMABAD, July 18: Apropos a news item headlined as “Minister says NHA maintains no balance sheet,” appeared on July 15 issue of Dawn, a spokesman for the NHA said that preparation of the financial statement for the budgetary year 2002-2003, was under progress which is to be completed by December, 2003.
On the directive of the minister of communication, the process of preparation of entity accounts had been accelerated, a press statement issued by the NHA spokesman said.
According to the spokesman, finance and accounting system of the NHA was initially inherited from the National Highway Board (NHB) which operated on a single entry accounting system based only on receipt and payment.
He claimed that single entry accounting system was not amenable to preparation of balance sheet. However, in 1994 the NHA started streamlining its accounting system in association with the World Bank. Due to lack of information and accounting records and agency accounts and financial statements of the NHA were prepared by a firm of Chartered Accountants for the period 1994-98. The accounts for the year 1995-96, 1996-97 & 1997-98 have also been audited by commercial auditors.
The NHA spokesman further said that recently a number of measures to improve financial management, including implementation of double entry accounting and its computerisation, appointment of chartered accountant as GM and strengthening of accounting setup, had been taken.
The clearance of the backlog of entity level financial statements for the period 1998-2002 has been initiated through commercial accountants.
The Auditor-General of Pakistan has been regularly conducting yearly audit of the NHA, as per NHA Act, 1991. The budget of NHA, which includes Government funds as PSDP and grant constituting 90 per cent of the NHA fund are processed, approved and expenditure monitored in accordance with the prescribed government procedures. The entity budget of the NHA was also duly authenticated by its policy board, the spokesman said.
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