By Lavern Clarke, Staff ReporterTHE REGISTRAR General's Department (RGD), the official agency for registration of births, deaths and marriages, ended the 2002 financial year with disappointing financial results, despite better than expected performance on income.
As at March 31, the RGD, an executive agency for three years, posted an operating deficit of $2.2 million, and ended with a net loss of $8.34 million, according to the agency's latest annual report.
The net loss compares unfavourably to the $7.5 million surplus recorded in the prior financial year. However, the agency considered that it had a year of "excellent overall achievement," having anticipated that it would have chalked up operating losses of $42 million, and a net of $29 million. It also recorded a 94 per cent score on its key performance indicators- up from 80 per cent the year prior having met or surpassed 49 of the 54 targets set for the year.
The figures contained in the report are unaudited.
The financial losses were tempered by better than expected inflows from express fees, which topped $93 million, and production of certificates, which brought in about $80 million. Those were the two top contributors to the $220.6 million in earnings the executive agency pulled in over the period. The projected income in the combined categories was just under $138 million.
The RGD had budgeted its total income from the services it sold at $174.6 million.
Its net position was influenced by a $111.3 million "transfer to miscellaneous revenues" - an entry on the accounts that remains unexplained - but was rebalanced by a $100 million allocation from the Consolidated Fund, government's treasury.
The agency's expenses were also higher than programmed at $222.85 million, just over $8 million more than budgeted. Staff costs relating to more than 270 employees made up the majority of the agency's spending, accounting for 63 per cent or $140.7 million of total expenses. The second largest income depleter, an amount of $56 million, was spent on the agency's premises.
The RGD's worst financial performance was, however, reflected on its balance sheet, which recorded a more than 50 per cent drop in net assets from $67.7 million to $30.5 million.
The decline stemmed from a 58 per cent jump in current liabilities to $31 million, a $25 million depreciation charge against $54 million of fixed assets, and a 43 per cent decline in current assets to $38.5 million, mostly the cash reserves, which plummeted by more than $23 million when matched against the period ended March 2001.
The Twickenham Park-based operation received more than 204,500 applications over the fiscal year, and managed to satisfy 185,700 of them, to record a 91 per cent success rate in this area. Its improved deliveries are due in part to the computerisation of its system and Births Deaths and Marriages System (BDMS) database which it continues to build.
Those applications that remain pending, said chief executive officer Dr. Patricia Holness, in a summary of the annual report, are due in part to incomplete registration information and her Department's inability to contact customers to plug the information gaps.
Of the almost 19,000 applications not satisfied, the RGD says only 545 of them were caused by the agency's delay.
Over the period January 2001 to March 2002, the executive agency registered 62,757 births, 18,592 deaths inclusive of still-births and infants, and 26,834 marriages, 394 of which were conducted at the RGD's Twickenham Park and Montego Bay offices.
The agency, which recorded lower than expected but fairly high levels of complaints about its services, is now moving to implement additional measures aimed at speedier processing. It receives the complaints from walk in customers, via mail, electronically through e-mail and fax, as well as by telephone. The RGD is now moving to do more in-depth analysis of the problems encountered by customers in order to smooth out the bugs in its system, and will be strengthening the unit that deals with telephone complaints to add a night shift so that queries can be dealt with more speedily and in real time.
