The majority of the £300,000 debt owed by the now-defunct race equality charity Awema to the Welsh government has had to be written off, the Public Accounts Committee heard on 10 March.

The committee was hearing evidence on the Welsh Government Annual Report on Grants Management 2014.

Sir Derek Jones, Permanent Secretary of the Welsh government, acknowledged it was a "substantial loss to the public purse."

The committee chair, Darren Millar asked whether sufficient work was done to recover the outstanding amount from the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association (Awema), the Swansea-based charity which was wound up in February 2012 after its public funding was withdrawn after claims of financial mismanagement.

Sir Derek Jones replied, "yes I think so, that's not so say we have not learned a few lessons about this, one of which was to work a bit harder next time to shorten the period of administration.

"All the time a liquidation or administration is going on, professional fees are being paid from what remains from the company's or charity's assets.

"Shortening that period of time would protect some of the money."

In a separate issue, AMs were told that administration costs per grant award ranged from £45 to £13,843 which, when considered as a percentage of the amount of grant funding provided, varied from 0.27% to 77.5%.

Sir Derek explained that percentages of administration costs for a small grant will always be higher than for a large grant, because of the "need to always undertake the baseline processes."

However Mr Millar described as "extraordinary" an example of a grant programme dealing with small grants to individuals, where a grant award of £58 incurred administration costs of £45, which is 77.5%.

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