Perverse incentives and a lack of accountability lead to rampant corruption in State

A new report by The Advocata Institute, titled “The State of State Enterprises in Sri Lanka: Systemic Misgovernance” identifies the systemic issues that plague state-owned enterprises (SOEs) leading to substantial losses. This flagship publication builds on the analysis and data from the first ‘State of State-Owned Enterprises’ report which was released in 2016.

The essays in the report attempt to analyse the causes for the structural weaknesses and propose simple recommendations to establish basic central government control over SOEs and improve accountability.

The report identifies the lack of an official government definition of state-owned enterprises as a point from which many systemic issues arise. The lack of a definition means that the government does not have an authoritative list of all SOEs. To fill this information gap, the Advocata Institute has compiled a list of all known state enterprises, their subsidiaries and their subsidiaries.

Figure 1 provides a quick overview of the data, emphasizing the excessive number of state enterprises.

The structural problems of state-owned enterprises emerge from the problem of multiple actors (bureaucrats, politicians and citizens) with conflicting interests. This makes state owned enterprises vulnerable to mismanagement and corruption because of potential conflicts between the ownership and policy-making functions of the government, and undue political influence on their policies, appointments, and business practices.

The report finds that internal control, monitoring and governance frameworks appear inadequate to deal with these problems – of the 527 entities regular information is only available for 55. Even obtaining a complete list of entities proved to be a challenge. Financials are routinely late and only a minority obtain ‘clean’ audit reports. In 2017, the total losses incurred amounted to LKR 87.78Bn. To put this value in context, the government budget allocated LKR 44Bn for Samurdhi payments in the same year.

Extracts from reports of COPE and the Auditor General which are included in Advocata’s report highlight repeated instances of fraud, mismanagement, corruption and negligence. The issues no longer appear to be isolated incidents of opportunistic behavior by individuals or occasional lapses in control but point to deeper, structural weaknesses. While internal control and accountability mechanisms are important in checking abuses, they are insufficient in themselves.

The report elaborates on how a trend for SOEs to be incorporated as limited liability companies allows politicians to bypass treasury or budget restrictions and evade parliamentary accountability. Complex corporate structures provide a convenient shroud for abuse. A review of the reports of the Auditor General and the Committee on Public Enterprises paints a dismal picture of systemic failures of governance leading to gross misappropriation of public funds.

The reports concludes with three main recommendations:

1. Compiling a comprehensive list of all SOEs and setting basic reporting procedures

2. Strengthening COPE and COPA

3. Implementing the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance

“A lack of accountability is leading to flagrant abuse within SOE’s. The Finance Ministry must act urgently to prevent it spiraling out of control” says Ravi Ratnasabapathy, Resident Fellow of Advocata and co-author of the “State of State Enterprises in Sri Lanka” report.

The immediate antidote to corruption is increasing and improving transparency and accountability. The ideal reform of the recommended three to address the problems that plague are SOEs is to introduce and enforce the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance.

Sri Lanka has a total of 527 State Owned Enterprises out of which regular information is available for only 55. The inefficiencies and mismanagement which riddle our SOEs are explored in the Advocata Institute’s new report  “State of State Enterprises in Sri Lanka- 2019″

To read more on SOEs and download full report visit www.advocata.org