INTA Handles Millions off Budget for Technical Assistance Agreements
<p><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">To the comments published in The Auditor.info last week, new irregularities detected by the Audit General’s Office must be added. Specifically, they said that the money that comes from cooperation agreements ends up being "diverted" to one of its foundations, leaving it out of the National Budget of INTA and attacking the principles of control and accountability of the public administration.</span></p> <div> </div>
Last week we published on The Auditor an article on the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA, for its acronym in Spanish) in which the AGN emphasized virtues of the Institute, like its presence throughout the country, but also pointed out that they had not claimed the benefits of their investments. In this edition we will post more flaws detected by the watchdog.
To meet its goals, INTA is associated with several national organizations, whether public or private, and international. In fact, until 2011 they had about 800 existing agreements, totaling almost 11 million dollars. But the handling of all that money is managed off-budget.
The AGN detailed in its report that "the economic contributions in cash derived from these agreements can enter both through INTA as well as through one of its foundations, ArgenINTA". Another foundation is INTEA, "all resources perceived by canon or royalties, which totaled at the end of the audit a little over 6 million dollars".
The watchdog stated on this procedure saying that it is only regulated by internal rules and that "it is not supported by the current legislation." In fact with this mechanism "the Foundation funds that do not enter the National Budget of INTA are deviated", a situation that "is against the budgetary principles of public administration."
One example cited in the report is the "Program for Strengthening Agricultural Innovation System" held with the participation of the Inter-American Development Bank (BID, for its acronym in Spanish). The total cost is 213 million dollars "of which 80% is provided by the BID and 20% by INTA." The money in question was received in 2012 "and is managed by an independent unit of the Institute". The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food "managed another loan which is administered by ArgenINTA amounting to 6.8 million dollars." Although "both credits are debited from the INTA budget" again, they are run off-budget and "were not exposed correctly in the investment account of 2011 or 2012."
Better Safe...
This is not the first time the National Audit warns on parallel operations of ArgenINTA. So the fact that in this new report there are details of the existence of an agreement with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is of great importance. The estimated total cost to train 1602 participants is of 5.8 million dollars to be paid by the country chaired by Nicolas Maduro. Because the contract was not fully terminated because the money has yet to be transferred, this is a case that should have a follow-up, considering that the funds would, again, be executed outside the budget.
As detailed in the report adopted in July of this year, the money will be transferred to an account ArgenINTA has since 2002 in the Miami branch of the Banco de la Nacion Argentina. It is noteworthy that when the AGN requested explanations on the account, the Institute said that "after the year 2001 they could not open dollar currency accounts in banks of Argentina so they proceeded to create a branch of the National Bank in Miami, Florida".
