According to a report from the General Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), the Registry of Motor Vehicles added between 2010 and 2011 a surplus of almost $1500 million, however, 98% of that money "was not used to finance their operations" but they went to "meet expenses related to other activities" in the entity.

The research, approved late last year, said that this situation "distorted the concept of duty or tax" paid by the users during that period and caused precisely an enormous performance in the national entity that handles the registration of motor vehicles, agricultural vehicles, and title loans for machinery.

The Watchdog explained that in 2010 the record in question raised by way of fees for procedures about $ 1.793 million; the amount was used to cover expenses for about $ 1,200 million and generated a credit balance close to $ 604 million (for exact numbers, click Download Report).

The following year, the performance was even looser: Record revenues totaled $ 2,465 million and disbursements exceeded $ 1,600 million, giving a surplus of $ 868 million.

Correspondence

In addition, and from these data, the audit noted a kind disproportion between the amounts involved and the amounts included in the budgets of the years analyzed.

It is that the corresponding Law Act provided in 2010 stated that the entity would have expenses amounting to $8,969,306, far from the $ 1,198,507,357 finally disbursed by the body.

The same happened in 2011: as estimated by the national budget, the budget envelope for the Registry was $ 15,324,521 and, as already stated, expenditures climbed up to $ 1,612,521,864.

This means that adding the estimates for 2010 and 2011, the agency would disburse about $ 24 million, but only with user fees it raised over $ 4,250 million and expenditures totaled about $ 2,811,029,221, i.e. 114 times more than expected in the approved budget laws for those years.

Thus, the report concludes that the numbers the Automotive holds "do not correspond to the size of the annual economic movement" and that this situation "prevents the use of the budget as a tool of control."

Cooperating Entities

There's more tracking on these expenses. According to Law 23,283, the Ministry of Justice -Portfolio depending analyzers body is empowered to conclude agreements with both public and private entities to cooperate technically or economically with the registry. However, the AGN "could not audit the income and investment cooperation funds set by law 23283 due to the negative (Registry) to provide the necessary information."

An x-ray of the Registry

The Audit explained that there are about 1,499 sectional registries distributed throughout the country and that, of that total, 777 are engaged in "registry of motor tasks."

As for the monitoring of these last offices, the report says that "the Department of Inspection and Control Management entity sectional inspected 266 in 2010", which represents more than a third (34.2%) of the articles in automotive competition.

Also, the AGN analyzed 42 records, which were selected from the most revenue, increased paperwork and consequently greater risk matrix. That shows, according to the report, it emerged that 20 Sectionals were not surveyed in 2010, 15 sites there had no record of previous checks and only seven were controlled during the year, which showed "low compliance control", sentenced the auditors.

Furthermore, the research adds that nearly half of the records that exist in the country (703 of 1,499) are "intervened", i.e., the authority in charge was not named by contest, as establishes a Resolution of the Ministry of Justice dating from 2003.

Of those “intervened,” 209 records are dedicated to automotive. The audit noted that for this group competitions to fill 83 positions were held, but "no appointment was materialized."

Regarding human resources, the report stated that the Register has 1,094 agents and, of these, only 139 are permanent staff (12.7%), while the remaining 955 are provided by the aforementioned cooperating entities.

On that provision, the AGN observed that "it lacks administrative career", and also has a lower level of remuneration for permanent staff, which "creates an inequitable situation to exist differential categories of workers for similar functions."

To complete the picture, the report notes that there are agents from cooperating agencies performing work in the Department of Inspection and Management Control, and there are even cases of people occupying the office of the Registration of Motor Vehicles.