Prior Sagaing Region Govt Hands Over Development Funds

By The Irrawaddy 20 July 2018

YANGON — The prior Sagaing Region government, from the time of President U Thein Sein, has handed over all outstanding regional development funds to the current government, according to the local planning and finance minister.

“We’ve received all the outstanding funds from the previous regional government,” U Soe Moe said on Wednesday during a press conference on the Sagaing government’s work in 2017.

Under instructions from the Auditor General, the region’s chief auditor last year audited the accounts of the regional development funds from the 2011-12 fiscal year to the 2015-16 fiscal year, when U Tha Aye was Sagaing chief minister.

According to the Auditor General’s report, the funds totaled more than 1.7 billion kyats ($1.2 million), which the current government received in cash and kind this year.

The report said the former regional government invested more than 700 million kyats in businesses including a hydropower project in a rural village of Homalin Township. It also bought land, shares in a private company and concrete pump trucks.

It gave millions of kyats to a local charity foundation and to the region’s General Administration Department and saved more than 630 million kyats in bank accounts.

The current regional government has now received all the money, concrete pump trucks and land, said U Soe Moe.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.