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Speaker disallows scrutiny of GGMC, GFC despite Govt.’s oversight
Kaieteur News – Members of the National Assembly were this year unable to pose any questions to the Minister with oversight for the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC).
Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat
This was the position adumbrated to the House by Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir, who disallowed any questions on the Agency during the considerations of the Estimates for the Ministry of Natural Resources. This is since no money had been allocated for those government bodies.
Subject Minister, Vickram Bharrat was the first to object when questions were posed by his Shadow counterpart in the House, Alliance for Change (AFC’)s General Secretary, David Patterson.
According to Bharrat, there is no allocation in the Budget for the named agencies and further, “…these agencies are statutory agencies and I don’t believe we have ever discussed their budgetary allocations.”
Seeking guidance from the Speaker, since the named agencies did fall under the oversight of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the MPs were told, “these estimates consists of sums that we appropriate to be spent for works in the estimates. If there are agencies that are not drawing money from the consolidated fund, it’s not going to be included here but I am sure there are other opportunities.’
To this end, he suggested to members that there is the opportunity to pose the questions on the agencies to the Minister at the Economic Services Committee for example.
Despite the House being reminded of a previous position by the late Winston Murray, that zero did in fact have a value for budgetary purposes and as such scrutiny should be allowed, AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan reminded that the Ministry had oversight for those bodies and that the opposition scrutiny was being excluded.
Coalition Member of Parliament, Annette Ferguson attempted to ascertain, since the entity is not getting any money from the consolidated fund, whether the people of Guyana can be provided with the balance of payments for the entities at the end of last year.
This was refused by the Speaker, however, who explained at the time, that the question could not be put forward since the Committee of Supply scrutinises the allocation being requested in the 2022 budget. Yet again, he reminded of other opportunities to pose the questions to the Minister, and repeated that the Economic Services Committee is an appropriate forum.
The Members of the House were informed, nonetheless, of a $200M allocation for the completion of a National Forest Inventory Programme as well as a Mining Station to be constructed at Aranka.
Senior Minister within the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, during his presentation of the Budget told the House that the forestry subsector is estimated to have expanded by 11.3 percent in 2021.
According to Dr. Singh, there was some level of recovery noted in the latter months of the year after the initial impact of the floods affected accessibility and declarations.
To this end, he disclosed that, “timber output grew from 344,179 cubic metres in 2020 to 383,189 cubic metres in 2021, reflecting strong demand as a result of the expansion in construction activity.”
Regarding gold, Dr. Singh said, “a turnaround is anticipated for the gold mining subsector, which is projected to grow by 12.2 percent in 2022 on account of higher expected declarations from one large operator, and the small and medium scale miners.”
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