Hanoi (VNA) - The State Audit of Vietnam(SAV) has proposed the Hanoi Beer Alcohol and Beverage JSC (Habeco) pay theState budget 1.85 trillion VND (81 million USD) in tax liabilities.

The move came after the SAV examined financialstatements and activities related to the management and use of capital andassets in 2016 at Habeco and its affiliates.

The SAV pointed out a series of errors, violationsof the administration and use of State capital of Habeco in 2016.

The total 1.85 trillion VND tax arrears thatHabeco has to pay includes 4.5 billion VND in value added tax, more than 441billion VND in excise tax, over 9 billion VND in corporate income tax, 381million VND in personal income tax and nearly 1.3 trillion VND in otherliabilities.

The company was also told to reduce the statebudget receivables to nearly 5.8 billion VND.

According to the SAV, Habeco parent company’sexpenditure on programmes and events in 2016 had exceeded the initial plan by 4.7billion VND.

It added that in 2016, the parent company held 30overseas business trips. However, 24 trips had unclear programmes and 19 hadincomplete legal procedures and unclear results.

Regarding the parent company’s beer purchase pricepolicy for subsidiaries, the SAV pointed out there was no relation between thepurchase prices and the producers’ profits. The determination of the beerpurchase prices were all calculated by the prices of the previous year adjustedfollowing the tax-related factors or the output prices.

SAV also stated that the interests Habeco’sshareholders were negatively affected due to the parent company’s misusing andmismanaging the state capital.

It said the parent company had a large bankdeposit but it had yet made an overall reasoned assessment on the creditinstitutions to select those with competitive interest rates.

Habeco completed eight licensing agreements witheight companies under its system in 2016, with contracted production of 68.5million litres of beer. These agreements required that the eight companies hadto sell beer at higher prices than Habeco.

However, Habeco had not examined those companies’selling activities, leading to big differences between the selling prices theyreported and the actual selling prices. And no violations were detected andhandled in accordance with the contracts.

According to Sabeco’s audited financial report,Habeco’s parent company’s revenue in 2016 reached nearly 7.7 trillion VND, up12.3 percent against 2015. Of this, revenue from the sale of beer was 6.6trillion VND and revenue from the sale of raw materials was more than 1trillion VND. Habeco’s equity as of December 31, 2016 was 4.3 trillion VND.-VNA