Category: Public sector

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Finance Ministry’s budget relies on Norwegian funds

Introduction
Today’s column resumes the review of the 2011 budgetary allocations to the principal ministries of government. Two of the ministries covered so far were the Ministry of Education on February 27 and the Ministry of Education on March 6. Today we turn our attention to the Ministry of Finance which in 2011 was allocated $18.3 B on the recurrent budget and $17.4 B on the capital budget, making a total of $35.7 B.

A summary of the expenditure as contained in the 2011 Estimates is as follows.
As a percentage of the national budget, the Ministry of Finance accounts for 18.4% of the recurrent budget and 28.0% of the capital budget. This makes it the single largest spending ministry in the government, and it is perhaps surprising that its capital budget is bigger than that of the Ministry of Public Works and Communication.

What is also significant is the increase over 2010 – a massive 64.3% increase with the bulk of it on the capital side. This is largely due to the proposed spending on LCDS projects including equity spending on the Amaila Falls Hydro-electricity project.

The Ministry
Like the Ministry of Health, this ministry has two ministers, with the junior minister Ms Jennifer Webster playing a more low-key, back-room role while the senior minister Dr Ashni Singh, brought in after the 2006 general elections as a technocrat is increasingly copying the style and language of his mentor, President Bharrat Jagdeo. That style has not endeared him to the diplomatic and multilateral financial community, and many observers think that that may be responsible for the closing of the development agencies DFID and USAID as well as the relocation of the office of the head of the World Bank mission in Guyana.

The World Bank office came in for a scathing attack by Dr Singh who accused the bank’s staff here of having “one of the largest appetites for publicity and self-promotion” and seeking to increase their “creature comforts” by relocating to “a grand former colonial residence opposite one of the city’s most fashionable cafés.” Coming in for his tongue-lashing was the Economic Intelligence Unit which had dared to question the final outturn for 2009 after the economy had performed poorly in the first three quarters. It was a case of how dare they question him.

His shutting out of critical views by draconian legislation on the New Building Society, his refusal to approve proposals by micro-projects for EU funding and his refusal to canvass views prior to his annual budgets all demonstrate an intolerance for opposing views that is inconsistent with a true technocrat.

Staffing
This is another of those ministries where the percentage which the number of contract employees bears to the total number of employees exceeds 40%. It is in fact 43.4% but it accounts for 72% of the total wages and salaries of that ministry. If one excludes the junior staff who according to Labour Minister Manzoor Nadir, were recently shifted to the category of contract employees, the share of the wages budget that is paid to contract employees is huge, very huge.

In the current budget of the Ministry’s Administration, three line items account for 94.06 % of the total as follows:
$B
Revision of wages and salaries 3.5
Electricity charges 2.5
Subsidies and contributions to local organisations 6.3
12.3

In the Government Accounting Administration two line items – statutory pensions and gratuities ($2.2B) and Pension Increase ($2.1B) – account for 82.4% of this programme’s activity.

Subsidies and contributions
The entities in receipt of the largest contributions were the Guyana Revenue Authority ($3.1B) and LINMINE for community power ($2.2B). It is of some interest that notwithstanding a decision of the court, the GRA is treated for the purposes of its expenditure as a separate entity while its entire income goes into the Consolidated Fund.

Other significant subsidies and contributions were made to organizations, some of which are of doubtful legal status, while that of their audits is even less clear. The principal ones are:

$M
Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit 99.2
Ethnic Relations Commission 89.1
Kwakwani Utilities Inc. 253.5
State Planning Secretariat 130.1
Statistical Bureau 172.0
Total 743.9

Capital programme
Under the capital programme are such hazy projects as:

$M
Road Support Project 150
Basic Needs Trust Fund 650
LCDS Projects 14,350
Student Loan 450
Poverty 717
GuySuCo 440
Total 16,607

The projects earmarked for funding under the LCDS programme are “Amaila Falls equity” which can surely mean anything and everything, Amerindian Development Fund and Land Titling, and Fibre Optic Cable.

Conclusion
But for the interventionist style of the President, this would easily be the most important ministry in the government. In addition to his several functions and duties under the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act 2003 which he sometimes conveniently ignores, Dr Singh is also the subject minister responsible for the Bank of Guyana, the Guyana Revenue Authority, the Bureau of Statistics, the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. Under the Bureau of Statistics Act, 1991 unless he appoints a chairman of the bureau he is automatically the chairman, making him the scorekeeper of his own performance. And as subject minister, he seemed blissfully uninformed about the failure of the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance which allowed Clico Guyana to conduct its affairs in the most reckless manner and caused the NIS to have a yet-to-be filled hole of $6 billion.

Even though the major bungling and the public pronouncements on the tax concessions to the Ramroop group by Mr Jagdeo took the spotlight off Dr Singh, he was in fact at the centre of the fiasco, having had to look at it from three different perspectives. To his further discredit, Dr Singh also chairs the board of NICIL, the state-owned company that simply refuses to conduct its affairs in accordance with the law.

The Minister regularly publishes the mid-year report with misleading dates. He was cited by an opposition MP in the $4B transaction with GuySuCo in which his colleague in the Ministry of Housing was found to have a prima facie case made against him for misleading the National Assembly. There can be no doubt that Dr Singh would have known and went along with the transaction. But if there is a single issue for which this Minister will always be remembered is that while he served as Senior Minister of Finance, his spouse was effectively the Auditor General. That is an extremely convenient arrangement, but one over which few would be prepared to risk their reputations, and which will overshadow Dr Singh’s tenure as Minister during which he reported growth in each year.

Next week I will review the annual report of the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry Limited which has published a notice of its AGM.

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The spending on health

Introduction
An appendix to the budget speech includes some very useful indications about the health of the nation. Here are some of those statistics:

These data tell a mixed story with some interesting variations. For example while the number of deaths per 1,000 of the population for infants (under 1 year) has declined significantly since 2006, the same measure for the under fives has remained almost constant. The percentage of the population that is severely malnourished has halved over the same period indicating a fall in the number from 3,043 persons to 1,556 persons. At the same time the number of persons who are moderately malnourished has fallen from 44,881 to 42,785, although it increased in 2010 when the economy reported favourable growth.

On the positive side too is the rapid growth in the number of doctors from 373 to 537. On the other hand the number of nurses in absolute terms has declined from 822 to 786, suggesting that the doctors now have fewer support staff with whom to work. Now that the government has taken a decision to import skills it is not unlikely that it may move to fill the many vacancies at this level in the health system.

Details of expenditure
Agency Details

It is important to note that there is other expenditure to fill in the wider picture. The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation is a separate agency in the budget and for 2011 has an allocation of $4.14 billion, or 71% of the budget for the substantive ministry. Expressed another way, the GHPC is allocated 42% of the total allocation of these two budget agencies. It is also uncertain whether there is proper accounting for the considerable sums received from various donors for different projects and programmes, with the major one being the HIV and AIDS programmes.

Over the years Guyana has been a major beneficiary of donor funds for our HIV/AIDS programmes which sought to project us as one of the region’s most infected populations. We received hundreds of millions from several sources and particularly from the US. It is unclear whether these have been accounted for in accordance with the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act which would deem the grants public money to be accounted for through the Consolidated Fund.

Capital budget
The ministry’s capital expenditure for the year is projected at $845 million with the lion’s share being $523 million under Regional and Clinical Services. Of this one hundred and fifty million dollars ($150 million) has been allocated for the “provisions [sic] for preparatory studies and designs for a Specialty Hospital”! Is this for real and was this hospital not supposed to be a free deal arising out of the President’s recent doctoral visit to India? Just improving the doctor’s quarters at Skeldon is budgeted to cost $10 million while filing cabinets, a projector, a refrigerator and chairs will cost $3.5 million. Seems that at Health, the mandate is to go for the highest bidder.

This ministry is one of the most politicised ministries with two ministers and a permanent secretary as political appointees. It is also the ministry in which more than half the employees (683 out of 1233) are contract employees with implications for their independence and right to membership of a trade union which in the main would be the Public Service Union that has had a stormy relationship with successive PPP administrations.

Lack of accountability
Now even by the standards of the Audit Office, the ministry and to a lesser extent the GHPC have had serious accounting issues over the years. In 2009 a fire of unknown origin destroyed the main building and with it financial and other records. What the fire revealed was a pattern of non-compliance with requirements to circulate copies of contracts, Tender Board minutes and basic matters like pay changes.

The matter of financing the GHPC is clearly not consistent with the requirements of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act in that the corporation has been receiving an appropriation rather than a subvention. The explanation given for the whole question of inadequate accounting and improper financing is far from clear, but we are told that the matter has been submitted to Cabinet for consideration. What is clear is that Cabinet has shown no urgency in complying with the statutory requirements.

Similarly, the GHPC, despite annual adverse comments by the Audit Office continues to spend moneys that should properly have gone to the Consolidated Fund, because the Board approved the expenditure.

Both the GHPC and the Ministry of Health continue to buy billions of dollars of drugs with scant regard for proper tender procedures, sometimes advancing hundreds of millions of dollars to the New Pharmaceutical Corporation for drugs received several months later. It is unclear why this lop-sided relationship has been allowed to continue when the transactions with the company cannot even be verified, and again the disrespect or sheer stupidity of the excuses is hard to understand. These transactions are reminiscent of the unlawful tax concessions given to the group of which this company is a key component.

But these are not all. The ministry fails to adhere to the FMAA in relation to unspent balances causing the national accounts to be overstated, and was unable to provide satisfactory evidence to support the purchase of some $20 million of fixed assets.

Conclusion
There seems more than mere financial lawlessness at this ministry of which one of the ministers had once famously said he would not hesitate to break the law in some circumstances. Earlier this week the Minister of Finance made a real show of calling in the police and the Audit Office at his ministry. Seems that the Ministry of Health can do with some real forensic auditing and those responsible be subjected to serious questioning.

Correction
In the Business Page last week, I mistakenly noted that Education’s share of the National Budget has declined from 10.6% in 2007 to 9.4% in 2010. In fact these percentages should have read 17.1% to 15.3%. I sincerely apologize for the error and the inconvenience caused.

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The spending on education

Introduction
The Budget debate is over and the spending is now in full flow. Contracts are being hastily awarded and colourable initiatives taken with significant budgetary implications. The President’s misnamed One Laptop per Family has begun, and despite the seriousness of the questions and the strength and logic of the criticisms, the project is proceeding as the President wants. All, it seems, oblivious to the sad state of education in the country, the many plans accumulating dust on the shelves, and the increasing disparity of performance of the poor child forced to attend the public schools and those of the powerful and privileged attending the private schools.

Just before sitting down to write – or rather type – this column I was reading the judgment delivered in fluent and beautiful language by former Chancellor Keith Massiah in the case Attorney General v Mohammed Ally delivered in 1987 in the Guyana Court of Appeal. On the question of the justiciability of the then Article 11 which has been adapted into Article 13 of the current constitution as well as enshrined in the fundamental rights article (149c), the Chancellor said: “[The question] is therefore in Guyana at large for debate and decision. Now that it has arisen, the court cannot retreat into a state of intellectual agoraphobia, refusing to venture forth and to express an opinion one way or another.” Responding to the question the Chancellor said: “I see no reason to think that the articles in Chapter II of the Constitution have no juridical relevance and are merely idealistic references with cosmetic value only. So to think would be to seek to debase the Constitution.” Unfortunately those concerned with the formulation and promulgation of our national budget have their own contrary ideas of what consultation means. By way of footnote the current Attorney General was a member of the team whose argument found favour with the Court of Appeal.

Process, not an event
This column sees financial management as a continuous process rather than an event and supports the call by Professor Clive Thomas for an independent Budget Office. With so much milk in the public purse, some competent, independent body needs to exercise greater oversight over the proliferating and omnipresent cats. There seems a view – not entirely without merit – that the absence of accountability stops with the President. In fact we only have to look across the ministries and the regions to find ministers, regional representatives and other politicos who emulate the President when it comes to careless and improper spending and accounting. In other words, such behaviour does not stop with the President but in fact starts with him. The nation therefore has to be on its guard and the fourth estate ever alert to the opportunities for improper use of the public purse.

Starting today Business Page will address with greater attention some of the spending approvals by some of the ministries and departments and intends to ask whether the National Assembly fully understands what is taking place with the finances of the country. I wonder if there is one per cent of the population which knows who the Accountant General or who the finance officer in the Office of the President is. One clue: it is not the President, despite how often and how flamboyantly he speaks and acts as if he controls the public purse or carries it in his back pocket.

‘Mis-maths’
I have chosen for the first of these ministry reviews the Ministry of Education partly because of the topicality and controversy over the One Laptop Per Family project on which more than $5.4 billion will be spent. There is some uncertainty and confusion over the total cost of the programme. The junior Minister of Finance Jennifer Webster announced the cost as US$295 per computer or whatever it is, while for 2010 the total expenditure is projected at $3.6 billion, of which half is from the national budget and the other half is expected from the Chinese. If we take the number of 90,000 households, times a unit cost of US$295 and convert that at G$204 to US$1, the figure is $5.416 billion, some 50% more. I would start then by pointing out that this project is more than half of the budget for the Ministry of Education which is $10.3 billion of which the recurrent budget is $7.544 billion and the capital budget is $2.661 billion. We should bear in mind however that the regions also have budgetary allocations for education, additional to those of the ministry.

A summary of the ministry’s budget follows:

Under-funding at UG
The Berbice Campus of the university, with approximately 550 students, receives $132.6 million or approximately $241,091 per student. By contrast the Turkeyen Campus with approximately 5,500 students receives $575.2 million or $104,581 per student, a significant disparity perhaps explained by the level of fixed cost. Similarly, the capital budget for the Turkeyen Campus is $35 million while that for Berbice is $20 million.

The treatment of the university by the government might come as a shock to Vice-Chancellor Professor Carrington and his team who invested considerable resources in preparing a 2009-2012 Strategic Plan that identified under-financing as the major problem facing the university. The numbers show that the President will be spending on his Laptop programme more than seven times the 2011 expenditure on the University of Guyana.

At a meeting with the private sector last year Prof Carrington reported on an encouraging meeting that his team had had with the President and the Cabinet. He is learning faster than he might have wished about the official policy towards education in Guyana and towards higher education in particular. If it is any consolation to the university, public education as a percentage of the national budget has actually declined from 10.6% in 2007 to 9.4% in 2010.

Information versus education
In its wider Strategic Plan 2008-2013 the Ministry of Education emphasised the critical role which the University of Guyana must play in ensuring quality education throughout the education system. The Laptop programme was not even conceived when that plan was developed and agreed by Cabinet. With such ‘ad hoc-ism’ in planning, it can be no surprise that the 2003-2007 Strategic Plan failed to meet the target of “50% for students meeting the defined standards of literacy and numeracy.”

On teacher training, compare Cyril Potter which gets $87.5 million in 2011 while GINA gets $111.5 million, suggesting that for this government imparting controlled information is more deserving of public funding than teacher training. Or NCN, ostensibly a commercial entity, gets $70 million.

Interestingly enough, employment costs account for 30% of the ministry’s budget for education delivery, while in Region 4 it is 73%, in Region 5 it is 72%, and in Region 6 it is 70%. The 30% in the ministry is partly because the subventions for UG come out of its budget. An interesting comparison too would be the distribution of persons engaged in education delivery across the country. There is a wide disparity across the regions between the ratio of persons engaged in education delivery with Region 6 having the largest number in relation to population of the regions and Region 4 the lowest. Whether this has anything to do with the Ministry of Education being responsible for some schools in Region 4 is not obvious, but it is clear that this would not be true of all the schools.

No contracts
In what is described as the Main Office, eight out of the ten employees are contract employees; under the National Education Policy 21 out of 42, up from 9 out of 28 in 2010; in Ministry Administration 56 out of 194; and Education Delivery 25 out of 2,220 employees. This suggests that the pattern of contract employees does not apply to the teachers, who are among the lowest paid public employees with pay scales range from $38,554 per month to $189,006 for what is called a special scale. Again we only have to compare what happens with the so-called consultants and politicians and other connected persons, who have been placed in the Office of the President at taxpayers’ expense.

One intriguing piece of information is the item ‘Dietary’ under Ministry Administration which is $600 million, a whopping 50% increase in 2010 accounting for 40.2% of that unit’s budget for 2011. This programme appears to have escaped the attention of the Auditor General in recent years. On the other hand it might support the notion that we do in fact have 90,000 poor households in Guyana and they are in receipt of some school feeding or similar programme.

Conclusion
The state of our education system is understandable from the poor, uncoordinated or non-existent policies towards education, the failure to identify and address the problems and the misdirection of budgetary allocation by the government. More than forty years after its birth, UG is treated like an unwanted stepchild, with inadequate support and an uncertain future. Sitting at the apex of our education system, in many ways, UG epitomizes the country’s education woes which it will take more than one laptop to solve.

Next week we will look at another of the ministries.

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Doing Business in Guyana – World Bank/IFC Report

Introduction
Guyana has improved marginally in the World Bank/ International Finance Corporation publication called Doing Business 2011 publication. Of 183 countries included in the report Guyana ranks at 100, compared with 101 in the 2010 survey. Of significance too is the fact that Guyana is listed as having three reform measures in 2010, which is better than most of the countries covered. The report also shows Guyana as one of the 85% of economies that made it easier to do business in the past five years.

Among the persons listed as local partners who would have provided information to the two international bodies are Geoff DaSilva of GO-Invest, Registrar of Companies Ms Carolyn Paul, the Public Utilities Commission, Attorneys Ms Josephine Whitehead, Ashton Chase, R N Poonai and Kashir Khan, business persons Desmond Correia, Lucia Desir, Gidel Thomside of GNSC, and accountants from PKF, Barcellos Narine & Co and Ram & McRae.

The 2011 publication is the eighth in the series that began in 2004 and investigates and reports annually on the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Eleven areas of life of a business are covered but one which Guyanese may consider very important is not: electricity, which continues like an albatross around the necks of businesses.

Quibbles and questions

Source: Doing Business 2011

No doubt there will be quibbles over specific rankings and questions about some of the placements. For example Guyana and Canada have similar companies’ legislation with an essentially one-page Articles of Incorporation. Yet for Guyana the time to start a business is shown as 30 days while for Canada it is stated as five days. At 5.3 the index of investor protection for Guyana seems generous and indeed helps to improve its overall position.

Where we do badly is in terms of getting credit (152 out of 183), paying taxes (119 out of 183) and closing a business (130 out 183). Seventy-four for “enforcing contracts” also seems a bit generous with inadequate arrangements for enforcing judgments made in non-Commonwealth countries. As the Table shows under ‘Getting Credit,’ it is a hat trick of zeros and one hopes that the Minister of Finance will follow through on the commitment to get a credit bureau going. The mess-up made by the Attorney General over the Deeds Registry (see Business Page December 5, 2010) was fortunately not an issue at the time the survey was done.

Foreign exchange issues
In addition to the concerns in Doing Business, one issue among investors is worthy of some consideration. It has to do with exchange controls which we are told have all been abolished. But that is not quite true. Yes, the bank and non-bank cambios easily facilitate the conversion and payment of foreign currency. There are some simple, non-intrusive provisions that require declaration and these pose no difficulty for the business persons. But there are others less popular, such as the requirement in the Bank of Guyana Act that all monetary obligations or transactions in Guyana (whether imposed or authorised by a law or otherwise) be expressed and recorded, and shall be settled in Guyana dollars unless otherwise provided for by law or agreed between the parties. But such an agreement requires the permission of the Bank of Guyana after consultation with the Minister.

And under the Foreign Exchange (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1996, the permission of the Minister of Finance is required for any of the following:

1. The lending to or borrowing from any person in Guyana, other than an authorised dealer of any gold or foreign currency.

2. The act of any person resident in Guyana which involves, is in association with, or is preparatory to borrowing any gold or foreign currency from, or lending any gold or foreign currency to any person outside Guyana.

3. The operation of a foreign currency account. The concern among foreign investors is the time it takes to open such an account and the conditions applicable to such account.

4. The lending by a person in Guyana of money or securities to a company resident in Guyana but controlled by a person resident outside Guyana.

Guyana a long time ago repealed its Alien Landholding Act but section 333 of the Companies Act still requires a licence issued by the President for the holding of land in Guyana.

Conclusion
Often the concerns about doing business expressed by foreign investors are always ventilated and addressed more easily that those facing domestic businesspersons. That should stop and we need to treat with all constraints to doing business, whether local or foreign investors.

One of the fundamental problems and contradictions in the business infrastructure is that economic activities require rules and laws to establish and clarify rights and obligations. At the same time as we witness the increase in drug-trafficking, terrorism, other crimes including money-laundering, there will be stricter rules that will necessarily impede business. The challenge is to get the balance right.

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There is a gap of between 15,000 and 19,000 who are paid the Old Age Pension but are not entitled under the law

Minister of Human Services Ms Priya Manickchand behaved with apoplectic rage in response to a conclusion in a report by her parliamentary colleague Mrs Sheila Holder that the number of persons to whom the Old Age Pension (OAP) is paid is inflated by 17,640 (phantom persons, according to Mrs Holder) with a loss to the state of over $1.3 billion.

Ms Manickchand reacted badly too to a cartoon in the Stabroek News of January 27 depicting her unflatteringly, prompting a letter by her which appeared with another by Mr Ivelaw Henry, her Chief Statistical Officer, both on the same day in the Stabroek News (Saturday, Jan 29) challenging Mrs Holder’s numbers. They both cited in support of the numbers being challenged projections done in November 2006 by a Mr Sonkarley T Beaie, who is described as a UN demographics expert and the holder of an MPhil, perhaps with a view to impress us.

To understand the conflicting positions, it is convenient to address three separate but related issues – statistics, the legal framework for the payment of OAP, and the arrangements in place for the payment of Old Age Pensions.

The most recent census done in 2002 shows the following data in relation to persons 65 years and over:

Between censuses, the country’s mid-year population is tracked by the Bureau of Statistics from data on births, deaths and migration, and is reported on in an appendix to the annual Budget Speech by the Minister of Finance. This is what the Bureau of Statistics reports for the years following the 2002 census: 2003 – 752,500; 2004 – 755,100; 2005 – 757,600; 2006 – 760,200; 2007 – 763,200; 2008 – 766,200, 2009 – 769,600, 2010 – 777,900.

One must always be cautious about population data and even more careful about making assumptions from them. I therefore wonder why instead of taking the actual population figure Mr Henry and his Minister chose to rely on Mr Beaie’s increasingly incorrect projections which for total population in 2010 were “wrong” by 10,000. It is fair to say that any major change in the characteristics of a population – other than through migration, a plague or a baby boom – takes place very slowly. From 1980 to 1991 the shift in the over 65 age group was a 0.16 percentage point and from 1991 to 2002 it was a 0.12 percentage point as shown in the table above. Even if we generously assume that the percentage of that group as a percentage of the current population has climbed to 4.5%, the maximum number of persons eligible for OAP would be approximately 35,000, or 7,000 less than the “around 42,000” the Minister of Finance referred to on more than one occasion in his Budget Speech.

That is not the end of the story, since not every person 65 and over is entitled to OAP. The Old Age Pensions Act sets as the conditions for eligibility for OAP that the person must have: (a) attained the age of sixty-five years; (b) been a citizen for ten years; (c) been ordinarily resident in Guyana during the last twenty years; and (d) passed a means test based on income and assets. Therefore any returnee to Guyana before 1991 is not entitled to a pension because of condition (c) and many if not most of the senior citizens living in Courida Park, Queenstown, Pradoville, Oleander Gardens, Republic Park, former senior public servants, professionals including doctors and lawyers, etc, are not entitled under condition (d).

We all have and know of countless others of our friends and relatives and their parents who do not claim Old Age Pensions. These would include persons 65 and over in the population not entitled to on account of their income and/or assets, plus those who are entitled to but do not claim because they do not know they qualify, plus those not entitled because they returned to Guyana less than twenty years ago. Those probably number between 8,000 and 12,000. To get to the number who meet all the tests, we need to deduct these from the maximum, theoretical 35,000, leaving between 23,000 and 27,000 persons who are entitled. This means that there is a gap of between 15,000 and 19,000 who are paid, but who are not entitled to the pension under the law.

At the current rate of $7,500, between $1.4 billion and $1.7 billion is being paid out unlawfully each year.

A recent Value-For-Money audit done by the Audit Office identifies a host of accounting and audit issues that could have given rise to the wide gap.

While the Audit Office must be commended for undertaking the exercise, it is regrettable that it did not attempt to put in dollar terms the range of values involved in its findings, and that it did not look at the related public assistance programme that is subject to even fewer rules and is more politicised and corrupted.

Let us put the calculation into perspective. If Old Age Pensions were paid only to persons legally entitled, then each pensioner could easily receive another $4,000 to $6,000 per month out of the money allocated in the 2011 Budget.

Ms Manickchand should now be willing to make her list publicly available for scrutiny.