2001 ANNUAL REPORT - Contents Page

Financial Performance and Position
RIRDC’s operations can be broadly categorised into its ‘Core’ or appropriation funded activities and those of its industry sub-programs (or sub accounts).
Revenue Sources
In accordance with the Corporation’s legislative basis, the overwhelming majority of its operating revenues are derived from Commonwealth appropriation, statutory industry levies and Commonwealth dollar for dollar matching payments on those levies.
These revenues from government and industry levies amounted to approximately $19.3 million or about 80% of operating revenues in 2000/2001.
Over time, the Corporation has secured more and more external funding to facilitate collaborative research projects and programs. In 2000/2001, this external funding amounted to $3.5 million and was derived primarily from government programs (Natural Heritage Trust, AFFA and other R&D Corporations) in respect of RIRDC’s Agroforestry sub-program.
Apart from a component of interest earned, all other sources of revenues are minor in nature.
Figure 1 gives a breakdown of the Corporation’s sources of revenue during 2000/2001.

Expenditure Items
Over 83 per cent of the Corporation’s operating expenses are attributable to the funding of contracted research projects.
These projects are funded within the Corporation’s four research and development programs and are disclosed in Figure 2, which gives a sense of the proportion of funds invested in each program over 6 years.

Employee expenses (which includes salaries, on-costs, fringe benefits tax, payroll tax) to facilitate the Corporation’s business rose by 13% compared to 1999/2000 and this was attributable to staff redundancy entitlements when the Dried Fruits R&D Council was established and the performance based movements of staff salaries.
Payment for goods and services of around $2.2 million during 2000/2001 was slightly lower than 1999/2000.
Figure 3 gives a breakdown of the Corporation’s operating expenses during 2000/2001.

Cash Balances
In terms of financial position at 30 June 2001, the Corporation’s financial assets of $10.7 million predominantly comprised cash, investments and Commonwealth contributions receivable. Only a very small proportion of the cash balance ($0.3 million) relates to RIRDC Core activities.
Almost all of this cash, investments and Commonwealth contributions receivable belongs to RIRDC’s industry sub accounts (eg Chicken Meat, Egg, Rice, etc) for which RIRDC must, under the PIERD Act, account for on a segregated basis for each industry. Figure 4 illustrates the proportion of cash held by RIRDC at 30 June over a 6 year period.
Accruals and the Equity Position
In the RIRDC Statement of Financial Position there exists a payable amount of $2.3 million for research projects.
This is primarily because RIRDC does not make research payments until research contractors have forwarded specified reporting deliverables within contracted time-frames.
This highlights the Corporation’s expectation that research is conducted on a commercial ‘fee for service’ basis in accordance with contractual obligations.
At 30 June 2001, RIRDC equity is dominated by the surpluses in RIRDC’s industry sub accounts. In contrast to this, the RIRDC Core operation has traditionally run an accumulated deficit.
Figure 5 sets out the equity position of RIRDC over the last 6 years.

Performance Against Budget
In a 2000/2001 operating budget context, RIRDC’s total operating income finished marginally below budgeted Annual Operational Plan (AOP) projections.
Generally, the deficiency in expected income was in relation to the receipt of lower than expected voluntary industry contributions during 2000/2001.
On the expenditure side, there were offsets within the program support and related communications outlays that resulted in actual expenditure only slightly exceeding their aggregated budget outlays. There was a 6% underspend for budgeted R and D projects.
In summary, RIRDC total operating income was slightly unfavourable to budget and total actual expenditure was 4% below the government approved AOP budget framework.

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