BHUBANESWAR: BHUBANESWAR: A whopping Rs 3,593.52 crore of dividends to be paid by the state public sector enterprises (SPSEs) to the state government is pending due to lack of monitoring and internal control, an audit by the accountant general has found.
As per the draft audit report accessed by The New Indian Express, 23 SPSEs, most of which are profit-making, have not paid the dividends for years between 2017-18 and 2024-25.
The Finance department’s office memorandum issued in February 2016 had mandated the state PSUs to pay an annual dividend to the state government, calculated as 30 per cent of either the profit after tax or the state government’s equity, whichever amount is higher. The audit analysed the profit after tax data from the annual accounts of test-checked SPSEs for last four to five years and compared it with the dividends actually paid and recorded in the state’s finance accounts over the years.
It was found that several SPSEs, despite reporting profits after tax, did not remit the required dividends to the state government as mandated by the memorandum. According to the audit report, Odisha Power Transmission Corporation Limited (OPTCL) has the highest outstanding of Rs 1,616.77 crore as dividend, followed by Rs 516.88 crore of Odisha Power Generation Corporation Limited (OGPC) and Rs 315.03 crore of Odisha Hydro Power Corporation Limited (OHPC).
Similarly, Rs 319.52 crore was to be paid as dividend by Odisha Mining Corporation Limited (OMC), Rs 242.24 crore by Odisha Coal and Power Limited (OCPL), Rs 205.64 crore by Odisha State Financial Corporation (OSFC), Rs 155.37 crore by Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha Limited (IPICOL) and Rs 67.26 crore by Odisha Lift Irrigation Corporation Limited (OLIC).
Since the SPSEs did not voluntarily make the required payments, the Finance department also failed to raise the necessary demands for these dividends. “This was due to lack of effective monitoring of the financial health of SPSEs, which hindered the assessment of the dividends that should have been collected,” the report stated.
The audit noticed that the annual accounts of many SPSEs were not submitted to the accountant general of the state, due to which the dividend required to be paid to the government could not be assessed. “Since the state government relies on borrowings for its capital expenditure, interest may be charged to encourage timely remittance of dividends to offset the additional financial burden caused by the delay,” it added.
Meanwhile, the Finance department has asked all departments to ensure that the outstanding dividends of the SPSEs under them are paid within the next 15 days. OMC has been asked to pay 90 per cent of its annual profit after tax from 2024-25 onwards as per the revised guideline issued in March this year.
