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CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS IS IN GUYANA

Dec 29, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The ruling administration is doing some damage control using the most disingenuous methods. Reeling from criticisms that the forensic audits have not produced value for money, the administration is attempting to claim that these audits have so far unearthed some seven billion dollars.
Well, if it had to take forensic audits to discover what was already in the public domain, that says quite a great deal about the ability of the government, does it not?
This seven billion dollars that was supposed to have been uncovered by the audit, ought to have been discovered by a simple examination of the accounts of the entities concerned. One billion of that was supposedly in NICIL. But was it not the same ruling coalition when it was in opposition which was of the view that billions had been stashed away including in overseas accounts?
So how come is it that they found only one billion dollars in NICIL and they did not have to call in the State Asset Recovery Unit to recover it from someone’s bank account? Explain that! If the money was being stolen, how come it was found?
The public is tired of this talk about monies being found. The public wants to know how much was stolen, who stole, where it is, and who is going to be charged for stealing the money.
The public is not getting those answers.
The government found money in NICIL. This means that nobody stole the money because if the money was stolen it could not have been found.
It was the same with the billions that are lawfully held by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC). GGMC earns income from its operations. It earns billions. These monies are lawfully held by the GGMC, and have been for some time now.
GGMC had at one stage proposed to lend billions to the Ministry of Housing. The loan was blocked and the court ruled that GGMC could not do so until certain requirements were met. The Ministry of Housing, under the PPP, never got the billions. But it was not stolen or hidden. It was being kept all along, lawfully, by the GGMC.
Billions from the GGMC and NICIL have been transferred to the Consolidated Fund. The coalition government had long contended that it was not interested in “parallel treasuries” and as such, it wanted the monies from certain agencies to be held in the Consolidated Fund.
But is this the reason why the seven billion has been transferred into the Consolidated Fund? Or is it that the government is trying to reduce the Budget deficit by transferring funds held by statutory bodies?
Is this the latest piece of economic wizardry that is being employed by the APNU/AFC administration? Is this the manner in which the government is proposing to finance the deficit: by taking monies from NICIL and the GGMC.
The government did propose in the run-up to the 2015 Budget that it was going to withdraw, in a phased manner, some sixty billion dollars that were being held by government in the financial system.
Now the fact that the government could withdraw this money suggests that it was not secreted, but was being transparently held by the former administration.
In the face of criticism that this would pose problems for the country’s financial system and could lead to an increase in credit, nothing further has been said.
So it needs to be asked, how does the government propose to finance its 2016 Budget deficit?
And is the transfer of the seven billion dollars to the treasury part of that initiative?

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