Gozo Ministry overspends cultural events budget five years in a row

The Gozo Ministry spent over €10.6 million on sponsoring cultural events meant to promote the sister island’s heritage in the past five years – almost double the allotted budget it was meant to spend.

As noted by the National Audit Office (NAO) in its latest annual report on government spending, the Gozo Ministry’s lax spending controls and almost non-existent paper trail even led to funding going to events which, according the ministry’s own rules, did not qualify for government sponsorship.

Overall, more than 360 sponsorships were issued through the Gozo Ministry in 2024, with 18 events organised by the ministry itself also being paid out of the same allocated budget. Though the ministry allocated around €1.5 million to culture initiatives for 2024, it spent over double that amount.

The pattern can be seen clearly when analysing the NAO’s data on the matter.

Besides failing to adhere to its annual budget for five years in a row, the Gozo Ministry also failed to clearly outline standard operating procedures which should have been used to appropriately assess applicants requesting funding. Instead, the ministry set up a board with a chairperson and three members to make that call without any specific restrictions.

“This hinders transparency, undermines accountability, and may create undue delays in the processing of applications,” the NAO’s report notes, attributing blame for the failure to stick to the budget to the ministry’s lack of protocols.

Notably, the culture board also failed to keep minutes of key decisions it took and was not in a position to justify and substantiate any of the decisions it made when questioned.

The ministry’s failure to adequately standardise the ministry’s selection process allowed for instances in which items which were expressly prohibited – such as expenses related to fireworks – were still paid out, in spite of multiple contractual provisions which stated this should not have been allowed.

One example cited by the NAO includes a fireworks display that cost a voluntary organisation a total of €27,000 to pull off, all of which were paid for out of public funds as a result of this lack of oversight.

The NAO’s audit of the Gozo Ministry’s cultural events scheme also pointed towards an exceptionally high level of flexibility towards contractual obligations such as submission deadlines and compliance certifications from the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations (OCVO).

State auditors noted how, in spite of the fact that all voluntary organisations applying for this funding were to be fully registered with the OCVO, “no evidence of compliance was found” in the case of at least three beneficiaries whose documentation was analysed by the NAO.

In fact, necessary documents like receipts, invoices, and detailed expenditure plans were generally not kept or tracked by the board responsible for these disbursements, raising even further questions about how an entity with such shoddy bookkeeping is supposed to adequately reconcile its expenditure.