Fiscal Enactments legislation could see repercussions from Intl. financial institutions

Aug 22, 2008 News

The People’s National Congress Reform yesterday reiterated that the Fiscal Enactments (Amendment) Bill 2008 that was passed successfully in the National Assembly recently was seeking to correct an illegality.

The party’s Finance Shadow Minister, Winston Murray, during a press briefing, added that it was flagrantly breaching the tenets of transparency and accountability by the way it treated with the Queen’s Atlantic Investment Inc. investments and by the framework it was creating under the Bill.

Murray also noted that expanding the Ministerial discretion in the grant of fiscal concessions contrary to its undertaking to international financial institutions would have repercussions for the country and he hoped that the international finance institutions would take cognizance and approach the government on the issue.

Murray noted that during the debates on the piece of legislation in the National Assembly Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh, “with much fret and fury and with impressive histrionics, waved a document from which he read indicating that Minister of Finance Mr. Carl Greenidge had in 1992 issued a directive to the then Auditor General setting restrictions on direct access by the Auditor General to public officials.”

“How could that have been an answer to the illegality committed and the secrecy of the Government in the QAII deal defies logic?”

He said that Carl Greenidge was the Minister with responsibility for the Audit Office so his action was within the law though it may be acknowledged that the directive was not in the best interests of transparency.

“However, there was no illegality.”
He added that in the case of the QAII deal there was a clear illegality, later admitted by the head of Go-Invest. “Further, the government simply cold-shouldered the many calls to lay the agreements in the National Assembly.”