Nida members call for improved Buddhist auditing

Nida members call for improved Buddhist auditing

Regulations governing temple finance should be improved to ensure temples' financial statements are properly audited, a professor from the National Institute of Development Administration (Nida) says.

Professor Nada Chunsom said current regulations are too lax and create a loophole for the misuse of funds.

The "change" money is only a part of the challenge facing temple management -- the majority of temples' income comes from donations.

"As non-profit organisations, temples must be able to show good governance principles to maintain people's trust," said assistant professor Nada, dean of the School of Development Economics at Nida.

Ms Nada did a study on temple finance in 2014 which found existing laws and regulations are not enough to ensure their financial management is in line with principles of good governance, even though temples have the status of non-profit corporate entities.

She researched the financial management of 490 temples nationwide and found that a temple on average has an income of 3.2 million baht (about 2 million baht of which comes from public donations), 1.4 million from the sale of sacred objects and amulets, and the other 1.05 million from special religious events such as kathin and ordination ceremonies.

At the same time, a temple spends 2.8 million baht on average per year. Just over 2 million baht goes to construction and building maintenance while the rest goes on maintenance to keep equipment and temple compounds in order, according to Ms Nada's research.

Ms Nada also found there was a wide gap between a rich temple and one with modest income. According to her samples, about 20% have an income of about 500,000-1 million baht, while about 2% (10 temples in her survey) have income and expenses of more than 20 million baht per year.

There are about 40,000 temples and 300,000 monks. However, the turnover of people in the saffron robes is high and people tend to spend less time in the monkhood these days.

Despite the massive amount of money pouring into some popular temples, most temples fail to show effective financial statements. Often, the abbot has the final say on selecting a person or a group of people to manage the temple's money, based on personal connections rather than their qualifications.

"The temple's financial statements are different from accounting standards," she said. According to her survey, only one-fourth of temples compiled reports on daily revenue and income. And few of them have their financial statements audited by outside institutions.

Although the NOB claims about 90% of temples submitted revenue and expense reports, most of their reports are not properly organised and fail to meet auditing standards, she said.

"But we have to bear in mind there are many small temples with very small amounts of revenue," she said.

"Their abbots did not have the resources to produce good financial records. But at the same time, there are some rich temples that earned several million baht a day and yet they have not transparently showed their financial records to the public."

She suggested the NOB should require temples to submit financial reports according to accepted standards and make information about their assets available to the public. The Supreme Sangha Council should also require temples to have outsiders audit their financial statements.

Asked whether laymen should be involved in the clerical world, she said: "We want to see good governance in temples' finances to prevent people with ill-intentions from exploiting temples. A case like this can affect people's faith in temples. Good governance will regain people's confidence and draw more people to temples."

Meanwhile, Nida Poll yesterday released a survey of 1,250 people interviewed between June 14-16 which found only 37% of respondents said temples' financial management lacks transparency. The survey also showed that 86% wanted to have the public take part in inspecting the temple's balance sheet to gain public trust, while 9% disagreed, saying that was the temple's business.

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