65 Co-op societies have not submitted their accounts for five years

By Saman Indrajith

Sixty five cooperative societies and associations registered with the Department of Cooperative Development had not submitted financial statements to be audited by the Department from 2015 to 2020, the parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) said in its recent report.It said that the Department had not audited 25 statements that had been submitted by institutions under it.

The Department has said Provincial Councils did not agree to provide financial statements that had been a main reason hampering the auditing process.It was also revealed that while the Department d planned to liquidate 16 cooperative societies, and to appoint liquidators for another 24 societies, in 2017, no action had been taken. Although the Department had identified a number of societies that should be liquidated, it did not have enough officers to carry out the liquidation process.

It was also found that the Department had decided to establish a data bank to collect and update information about the financial service societies at a cost of Rs.5,920,186 although the funds had been spent the Department has still not established the data base.Given that Provincial Departments of Cooperatives are not providing the necessary data, collection of data has been entrusted to the Department of Census and Statistics in future.The Department had also provided large amounts of money to Cooperative Development Fund and the Cooperative Surplus Fund as loans, it has not been able to recover them.