Commitments made out of National Lotteries Good Causes Fund effectively tied funds well into the future, to the possible detriment of other deserving causes, the Auditor General has found.

Auditor General Anthony Mifsud presented Speaker Anġlu Farrugia with a report commissioned by Finance Minister Edward Scicluna into the way the fund was managed.

The minister had said at the time of the change in government that the Fund was significantly over-committed, and he had raised doubts over a number of commitments. Last June, former Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had denied reports that his administration had committed itself to disbursing over €3 million until the end of 2015 from the Good Causes Funds. He had said that official documentation in the ministry would clearly show that this was not the case.

He had no objections to the Auditor General’s investigation.

The NAO analysis indicated that all commitments entered into between January 2011 and March 2013 were to be honoured by 2013 and 2014. This would entail the utilisation of just about all the available funds up to end 2014.

Although the NAO was fully aware of the fact that the guidelines for the approval of projects and initiatives were not legally binding, good governance would dictate further efforts to adhere to the guideline’s provisions, it said.

Shortcomings in this regard included instances where the funding parameters were not respected and thresholds for grants were surpassed.

Reasons for approval of funding out-side of the parameters established by the guidelines were not always clearly indicated in the report of the Good Causes Fund.

Data relating to the fund, although maintained, was fragmented, with no one comprehensive source that included all the relevant information for each application. Since the fund was accounted for on a cash basis, this rendered the task of keeping track of all commitments that had previously been made when approving new applications even more onerous, according to the NAO.

It made a number of recommen-dations to address the shor-comings identified in the administration ­­of the fund, such as making sure commitments not yet settled would not exceed a certain amount above the actual balance held in the fund’s account at any given time.

The full report is at www.nao.gov.mt.