By: Staff Writer
Colombo (LNW): In the wake of forming a joint venture with Milco Pvt Ltdand Indian Milk giant Amul, National Livestock Development Board (NLDB) handling local milk production has come under charges of irregularities and malpractices.
The national audit office in its latest findings has exposed these irregularities and failure in achieving the targets expected from the corporate plan and the setback in the progress as an institution.
Inability to submit annual reports to parliament from 2017 to 2021, not submitting financial statements for the years 2019,2020 and 2021 to the Auditor General for his opinion.
It has only submitted the financial statement of the year 2018 which has been presented to him on the 05th November 2022.
The NLDB gas failed to create an Information Management System for strengthening the internal administration and administration of financial affairs of 31 farms.
Valuation of animals in farms has not been carried out according to standard accounting procedures.
A matter has arisen on the accuracy of information that has been produced about the livestock without including them even in their financial statements while delaying in submitting those statements in time.
The Auditor General’s Department says that there was a lack of interconnection between the corporate plan, action plan and procurement plan and those plans were not practical.
NLDB management has also failed in allocating funds for various projects that have been proposed by the institution itself.
The institution has not been carrying out a proper and timely analysis of the Information Management System.
Exposing malpractice in the implementation of the Wellard Project, the national audit office has found that out of 4495 dairy cows imported from Australia, 3991 dairy cows have died and only 504 dairy cows have left in the arms owned by NLDB.
It has ben revealed that an advance payment of 11.09 million US dollars has been paid to a contractor company for importing 15,000 dairy cows in 2018.
However, no dairy cows have been imported so far for the last 4 years and the NLDB was encountering an issue with keeping records of the aforesaid advance payment for those cows in its accounts.
Although the total milk production of the country is more than 500 million liters, the National Livestock Development Board has contributed only with 10 million litres in the year 2021.
It is only 2% of the total milk production in the country. Operations of the institution denote that farms in Nikaweratiya,Ridiyama and Menikpalama incur continuous losses whereas the annual revenue of the institution records at Rs.3 billion per annum.
The Auditor General’s Department sa strongly recommended the merging of the National Livestock Development Board and Milco company to ensure efficient productivity in the milk production and distribution within the country.
