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Finance Minister fails to bring NICIL reports to Parliament – APNU
Shadow Finance Minister of the Opposition faction, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), Carl Greenidge, has said that Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, has failed to comply with the resolution which came out of the motion on NICIL. He added that this will definitely be followed up in the National Assembly.
Carl Greenidge
Greenidge said that there are clear and blatant abuses of powers on the part of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) which is headed by Winston Brassington.
The former Minister of Finance said that Dr. Singh will be asked as to what he is doing in relation to the resolution.
He said that the motion arose from general concerns about the unaccountability on the part of NICIL for a variety of actions; how it had taken decisions with Government resources in a number of projects and also because…They are six or seven years behind on reporting on the accounts that it was suppose to have prepared.
The Motion which was drafted by Greenidge made reference to corruption on NICIL’s part and the fact that state assets were being disposed of without going through the proper channels.
Greenidge said, too, that the company is currently carrying out functions that contradict the original plan that fashioned the legislation to establish it.
He said that the organization was originally established as a holding company which was intended to oversee the allocation of assets that came out of the privatization of assets. It was also responsible for advising on how properties are disposed of but the government instead, “uses NICIL to get these lands and distribute them to its friends without having to go through any proper procedure for vetting or for setting prices or anything like that.”
“State lands are not supposed to be handed out at personal whims and fancies, which is what the government has been using the company to do.”
This is the heart of the problem, the Former Finance Minister said, and so a motion was passed in 2012 calling on the government to account for the lands that it has been entrusted with and to explain the basis upon which these lands have been handed out.
It was also asked to ensure that the agency brings its accounts up to date and that they hand over the monies and excess funds over to the treasury.
The motion called upon the Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, to take entities such as NICIL that had been given special privileges to hold funds without transferring them to the treasury, to hand them over instantly .
The motion, Greenidge said, was originally submitted sometime in April and passed on June 27 and the Dr. Singh was required over the past three years to do a number of things.
He said that the abuses of the powers that have taken place post 1997 and the failure of Dr. Singh and NICIL to satisfy the requirements that are set out in the resolution is an absolute disrespect of the Law, hence the decision by the A Partnership for National Unity to follow up on resolutions that came out of the motion.
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