Category: Letters to the editor

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NICIL is in violation of the law

Ram & McRae in its Budget Focus 2010 drew attention to one example of the subversive manner in which funds constitutionally due to the Consolidated Fund are diverted into a government owned company with the impressive sounding name of National Industrial Commercial and Investments Ltd (NICIL). The steps are as follows: 1. “vest” into this company assets belonging to the state; 2. have the company sell those assets; 3. use the money thus received for unconnected purposes, without authority or oversight; 4. pay any chicken feed balance as dividends into the Consolidated Fund.

The company can even divert sewage. It financed the multi-million dollar sewage diversion for the Kingston phantom hotel project that refuses to go away. In 2007, it also used $5,000,000 of Lotto funds generously made available to it by President Jagdeo, to “support public viewing of FIFA [2006] World Cup Football.”

The Directors of the Company on record, as they were at 2004, were Mr Saisnarine Kowlessar (then Minister of Finance); Dr. Ashni Singh (then Director of Budget); Dr Roger Luncheon (Head, Presidential Secretariat); Mr Geoff Da Silva (Executive Director, GO-Invest) and the ubiquitous Mr Winston Brassington, Executive Director of NICIL.

The Secretary and Legal Officer of the company is Ms Marcia Nadir, attorney at law.

The law requires all companies to have annual audits, and to file an annual return with the companies section of the Deeds Registry. The return must be accompanied by audited financial statements, and must contain information on the directors, the company secretary, and the shareholders.

Additionally, an annual report, which is distinct from the annual return and audited accounts, must be submitted to the Minister no later than six months after year-end. He then has three months to lay these over in the National Assembly.

Now this is the situation:

1. The company has not filed any annual return for more than ten years.

2. No report and accounts have been laid in the National Assembly for the same period.

3. No notice has been filed to show that Mr Saisnarine Kowlessar has been replaced as a director.

Non-compliance constitutes an offence for which the company and every director and officer, including the secretary, are liable. They stand accused of gross violations of the law. Frighteningly, they also control, directly or indirectly, the billions of taxpayers’ money in the National Budget and the nation’s public assets.

The Registrar of Companies is responsible for enforcing the act and has the power to strike companies off the register. She has been demanding compliance by private companies. Why is nothing being done against NICIL and its directors?

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Estimates do not disclose total cost of overseas visits for Office of the President

In responding to concerns about the cost of presidential travel, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh is quoted as saying that “over the past three years, the average annual expenditure for the entire government on travel has been $200M.”

The 2010 Estimates which Dr Singh presented just three days ago has a head ‘Transport, Travel and Postage’ under which is a line item ‘Overseas Conferences and Official Visits.’ The Estimates disclose nil costs for the Office of the President, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and indeed all the ministries, departments and regions, barring the Finance Ministry and the Guyana Defence Force. It is under these two budget agencies from which Dr Singh would have derived his $200 million figures. But it would have been helpful and reassuring if Dr Singh had indicated, at least for the Office of the President, the total cost of overseas visits for the period, the subject of concern and speculation.

Dr Singh should have explained whether that line item includes per diem allowances and other costs associated with overseas visits, and indicate if payment for any such trips is reflected under any other line item, or channelled through any other government agency or controlled entity. The entourage to witness the President receiving an honorary doctorate in Russia included Mr Winston Brassington, head of NICIL. Details that would indicate the propriety of the financial arrangements for that trip (which had some private elements to it), would help to dispel many of the public concerns and neutralise speculation.

The in-country costs of presidential visits are invariably met by the host country. Dr Singh should disclose whether Dr Jagdeo has been receiving per diem for such visits, and the amounts paid to him for the past three years.

Finally can Dr Singh please say whether he agrees with a response to an Audit Office 2003 query on overseas travel, that the “concerned official” (suspected to be the President) is exempted from clearing his travel advances. If the President is not exempted, can Dr Singh tell us the number and value of advances the President has outstanding.

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The constitution continues to be flouted in respect of the presidential assent

In a recent interview on Plain Talk, I asked the Prime Minister in his capacity as Leader of the National Assembly whether he was concerned about bills being passed by the National Assembly and not being assented to within the period (twenty-one days) required by the constitution. This problem first surfaced in a big way in 2006. The Prime Minister estimated these to be “about six.”

I knew that was not correct and visited the Parliament Office on Tuesday January 12, requesting an update on 2009 bills not assented to. I was asked to come back later in the day. After making several attempts to contact the person her supervisor told me that the information could not be made available to me.

In any case it was public knowledge that for 2006 ten bills lapsed because of presidential inaction and from records we maintain at Ram & McRae, I was aware that for 2009 only, twenty-six of forty bills had been published in the Official Gazette. What surprised me not a little is that after my enquiries there appeared a flurry of activities involving “the printers” and I wondered whether there was any mischief afoot, even though the Gazette in which the legislation is published had already had moved on to 2010.

It was a shock, but not a surprise, therefore, to receive this past Wednesday several Extraordinary Gazettes containing legislation that dates back, in some cases, several months.

This information provides clear evidence that the constitution continues to be flouted by the President with the tacit or expressed agreement, or neglect of the National Assembly. And even if we assume that the backdated publication is constitutional and legitimate, that leaves eight bills passed in 2009 by the National Assembly which the President has not dealt with in compliance with the constitution.

The implications are more than academic. To force public servants either directly or indirectly to engage in backdating any documents, let alone the Official Gazette, is to make corruption part of their work. Second, it is dangerous for the President to break the very constitution which he took an oath to uphold. Finally, an Act comes into operation on the date of publication. Those Acts published in predated Gazettes are therefore considered to be of retroactive effect, an equally dangerous issue.

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Two per cent growth in the economy is wishful thinking

In looking to 2010, Business Page predicted that the 2010 Budget speech would make the economy’s decline of the first half year of 2009 into a full year growth. No sooner had I submitted that column than no less a person than the President himself, in his New Year’s message, reported “preliminary indications that the economy registered a positive growth rate of about 2% in 2009.” He was careful not to provide any support for such assessment, restricting his only specific comment to the sugar and bauxite sectors whose performance he described simply as “below expectations.”

But that limited comment is enough to caution even the most casual observer not to take the President’s assessment seriously. In November 2009, reporting a 1.4% decline in the economy for the first half of the year, the Minister of Finance reported a 19.3% half-year decline in sugar, a 6.7% decline in rice and flat performance in mining and quarrying. For the remainder of the year, the Minister expected the performance of rice to deteriorate and for mining and quarrying to do substantially worse than they did in the first half. We know too that bitter industrial relations since June 2009 ensured that sugar’s woes continued and, quite possibly, deteriorated in the second half of the year.

Even GuySuCo’s CEO, in his New Year message seemed keen to forget 2009 even as he expressed some optimism for 2010. If a miracle had in fact taken place and Guysuco had transformed a 19.3% decline in the first half of 2009 to a full year 10% growth, the corporation and the President would surely have noticed it.

The revised outlook for a 2.5% growth in real GDP, including all economic sectors, predicted in November by the Minister of Finance, was premised on the full-year growth (of 10%) in sugar – equivalent to a turnaround of 36% for sugar in the second half of the year! That simply did not take place and no other sector of significance could have made up for the loss. To put the numbers another way, non-sugar growth was expected to come in at 1.5%, so that the economy did substantially better than the Minister of Finance expected less than eight weeks ago.

The President’s assessment of an overall 2% growth seems more a mixture of wishful thinking, political rhetoric and self-vindication for his firewall assurance, than a serious, informed or honest assessment by someone trained in economics. Having done his political work, he has now placed the Minister of Finance, the Bank of Guyana and the Bureau of Statistics under immense pressure to produce numbers to vindicate yet another of his assessments.

They may oblige. It is hard to be confident about the integrity of the statistics coming out of a Stats Bureau that would not publish the monthly Georgetown price data it collects, usually doing so only after the Minister has announced suitably relevant numbers in his half-year report or his Budget speech. And the fiasco of conflicting rates of 2009 first half (un)real GDP growth, reported in the Business Page series (November/December), but which neither the Minister nor the Bank considered worthy of a public explanation, has similarly affected the credibility of both the Bank of Guyana and the Minister of Finance.

It seems to me that in relation to statistics on the economy and financial information coming out of the government, 2010 will be no different from 2009 and before.

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The President should act to prevent further carnage on our roads

Once again a truck/minibus accident takes Guyanese lives, generating widespread calls, once again, for action. All Guyanese would no doubt share the grief of those who have lost their loved ones and are grateful for the lives that were spared.

Today, Monday, a couple of us went to De Edward to see one of those who miraculously survived, an employee of Ram & McRae. He and his parents confirm the reports in the press of the heroic work of the staff of the Mahaicony Hospital, work that deserves recognition from us all, work that is caring and heartening indeed.

Yet the tragedy appears not to have had even the most temporary of effect on the drivers using the road from Georgetown to Rosignol. As we journeyed both ways, I observed and made a note of the registration numbers of the vehicles that passed ours. Of the minibuses, trucks and cars that we encountered only one was anywhere close to the speed limit. I witnessed vehicles overtaking on double yellow lines, driving at a dangerous speed, vehicles without trafficators, and of course the ubiquitous roaming animals.

What I did not see in the entire journey beyond Sparendaam Police Station was a single police officer – traffic or otherwise. That was most disappointing on the day that the press carried a comment from the Commissioner of Police on the accident.

On our way up, I saw not a single warning against speeding and only a handful of notifications of the speed limits, all inconspicuously written.

After the succession of lives lost in road accidents and with no discernible action by the government and the police on issues like better regulation of minibuses, speeding, the granting of licences and certificates of fitness, highway patrols, better signs about speeding and speed limits, drunken driving, etc, it is hard to be optimistic.

Perhaps, however, this most recent accident will shock the authorities into action and something real and effective will be done.

I am not being facetious and am seriously asking the President to postpone his one-colour taxi plan and instead act to prevent further carnage on our roads.