Culture, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation, Markets and Companies

Deficiencies have been established in all audited areas. Therefore it is not possible to single out one main reason for the opera's inefficiency.

According to the audit results, the opera has not used its budget as a tool for planning financial operations, supervision and decision making, since the actual implementation of the budget significantly differs from the projected one. Budget adjustments, allowing to stick to planned figures, have not been made on a systematic basis. For example, the actual cost of new productions at the opera exceeded the projected amount by EUR 282,173.98 in 2012, and no potential sources of funding were indicated.

Royalties were exceeded by EUR 218,617 in the first nine months of 2013. In 2009-2013, the opera's budget was not planned per structural units and projects, making it more difficult to establish shortcomings in the opera's budget during this period.

The audit also mentions other deficiencies. For example – when planning the opera's finances in 2009-2013, the cash flow approach was used taking into consideration profit, loss and balance indicators, making it harder to determine the actual financial situation at the opera, since debts and other liabilities are not taken into account when analyzing cash flows.