AUDIT REPORT | The National Entrepreneur Group Economic Fund (Tekun Nasional) recorded an accumulated losses of RM209.28 million by the end of 2015, according to the latest Auditor-General's Report.

The auditor-general noted that the financial performance of Tekun was "less than satisfactory for the year 2013 to 2015 due to massive debt to the government, and a total of RM410.61 million bad debt was written off".

Tekun, a financial services agency for micro and small entrepreneurs, has managed to increase its total financing from RM2.69 billion to RM4.29 billion for 473,982 entrepreneurs within 18 years, according to the report.

Despite the management of activities was in accordance with Tekun's objective, the audit report pointed out that its activities were not properly planned.

"Its corporate governance practices were also less than satisfactory," concluded the report after an audit carried out between November 2015 and December 2016.

Tekun only achieved less than 50 percent of the targeted number of participants for the private public partnership (PPP) Micro Fund Programme for Second Chance Programme and Dropout Student Loans Programme.

The report said Tekun failed to carry out an assessment on its funding programme.

It also noted that Tekun approved loans amounting to RM1.02 million with 31.9 percent of its borrowers without evidence of application forms as these forms were not submitted to audit for verification.

The audit report proposed that Tekun should review the mechanism of its programme and set up a mechanism to evaluate the outcome of its programme.