The staffing of management and executive personnel is insufficient at the level of some units subordinate to the Ministry of National Defense, and the measures to attract and retain qualified human resources are not efficient and correlated with the volume and complexity of the responsibilities of the respective positions, resulting in a limitation of the capacity to achieve the entity’s objectives.

This is one of the observations resulting from the financial audit mission on the annual execution account of the state budget for 2023 carried out between March 4 and November 29, 2024 at the Ministry of National Defense (MApN), according to a press release from the Court of Accounts.

Another conclusion was that the MApN’s IT system is not adapted to the volume and complexity of the activities carried out, and the accounting program used does not allow the automatic generation of quarterly and annual financial statements, which generates significant risks.

„Although the tests performed by the audit team did not identify misstatements caused by this aspect, there is a considerable risk that can be eliminated by implementing an integrated IT application that allows for the automatic centralization of data in the consolidated financial statements,” the press release reads.

According to the cited source, following the mission carried out, the audit team concluded that, except for some errors that are not generalized, the financial statements prepared by the Ministry of National Defense for 2023 present, in all material respects, a true and fair view, in accordance with the financial reporting framework applicable in Romania.

Among the errors identified by external public auditors are: the undervaluation of non-current assets by 477.318 million RON, as a result of the failure to record 58 invoices in the accounting records, representing the equivalent value of goods/products and services purchased under contracts with external partners; the overvaluation of current assets by almost 219.866 million RON, as a result of the failure to justify advances granted to CN Romtehnica SA; the undervaluation of capital by 335.374 million RON, as a result of irregularities in the registration of assets in the public and private domain of the state.

Among other non-conformities identified, the auditors also reported the failure to update data from the centralized inventory of state public property, both in terms of their composition and value, due to changes that occurred, such as new investments, modernization works, revaluations, transfer to the patrimony of other institutions and cadastral works.

„Thus, the accounting value of the state’s public domain assets, reported in the financial statement for 2023, was 32,027,513,465 RON, while the value recorded in the centralized Inventory by the Ministry of National Defense until the date of preparation of this document is 28,820,072,294 RON,” the cited source specifies.

The analysis of the degree of implementation of the measures and recommendations issued by the Court of Accounts during previous financial audit missions resulted in a high level (over 90%) of involvement of the MApN management in correcting/remediating the negative aspects noted in previous years, the report also shows.

AGERPRES