Picture Courtesy: Youtube
In response to the Royal Audit Authority’s (RAA) Hospitality and Entertainment (HE) expenses report of 2015-2016, the former Prime Minister Dasho Tshering Tobgay says the inclusion of in-country travels under HE expenses was one of the reasons for the huge amount.
According to an article and a recently uploaded video by Dasho Tshering Tobgay, expenses related to travel of ministers and their teams, travel of government guests and expenses for unplanned national events were also booked under hospitality and entertainment.
RAA’s hospitality and entertainment expenses report for 2015-2016 had revealed that the former government had spent more than Nu 55 M as HE expenses.
He said, “All the expenditures were not incurred on nyendhar, semso and soelra but most expenses under HE was spent on in-country travels. During my five years of tenure, I visited all the 205 gewogs. It took us weeks when we travelled to remote areas like laya, Lingzhi and Lunana. Also when I travel, many relevant officials also travel along whose expenditures are also made under HE expenses.”
According to Dasho Tshering Tobgay, the RAA recommended the need for proper guidelines on HE expenses in 2017. The cabinet then directed the Ministry of Finance to prepare the guidelines.
“If we look at 2017 to 2018, the hospitality and entertainment expenses alone is only about one million nine hundred thousand. But over one million eight hundred thousand was spent on national events, over two million eight hundred thousand on receiving government guests and over 3 million two hundred thousand on visiting the dzongkhags and gewogs.”
This he said was maintained separately after RAA’s recommendation on the draft report.
He said if the actual expenses were calculated by segregating hospitality and entertainment from other allowable expenses, most of which consisted of in-country travel, the total expenditure would not be as high as Nu 55 M.He wrote, “this is a far cry from Nu 55 million per year.”
He added that travel was booked under HE expenses because it was a past practice that had always been accepted by the Finance Ministry and RAA.
