THE Treasury Department has apologised to businesses after errors included in a report listing the top 100 suppliers to the government.
The Top 100 Supplier Spend Report was re-issued earlier this year, with significant changes for three organisations included in the original version, published in November.
Legal firm Bois Bois was 18th in the initial list, with a spend of £3.62 million by the government, but had dropped out of the top 100 altogether by the time version two was released.
The Treasury Department said it had been notified that payments for the law firm included both legal fees and the purchase price paid for the acquisition of land and buildings, and that when this was pointed out, a wider review had taken place, excluding transactions that were not payments for goods or services.
“We apologised to the business that contacted us and we apologise to any other suppliers whose payments were set out incorrectly,” the department said.
The other organisations to fall appreciably were the Parish of St Helier, with spending recalculated from £3.01m to £1.29m that caused a drop from 21st to 58th in the list, and Les Amis, down from 38th to 54th owing to £600,000 being excluded from the initial figure of £2.06m.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department explained that the report “is the product of thousands of transactions accounting for more than £300 million spent with suppliers and is a laborious process”.
New steps have been added to the review process in order to screen out the types of transactions included in error.
The department concluded: “We are also exploring other opportunities for improvement, including underlining the importance of ensuring that transactions are accurately recorded at the outset and investigating whether AI could perform the kind of granular review that is time- and resource-consuming when done manually.”
