A war of words con­tin­ues to be waged be­tween Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie over the $40 mil­lion spent to host the Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum (ACF) in T&T. The three-day event was held Oc­to­ber 8 - 10, 2014 in Port-of-Spain when Tewarie was Plan­ning Min­is­ter.

Hours af­ter a terse ex­change with Robin­son-Reg­is over the is­sue dur­ing a sit­ting of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee of Fi­nance in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day, Tewarie, now the MP for Ca­roni Cen­tral, took to Face­book yes­ter­day to de­fend the ex­pen­di­ture of $40 mil­lion on the event. He did so af­ter Robin­son-Reg­is said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the mat­ter.

Tewarie ex­plained in his post that the mon­ey was spent over two years in prepa­ra­tion for the ACF, with sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place in the run up to the event

"This in­clud­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a full time sec­re­tari­at which was dis­band­ed af­ter the con­fer­ence was over and the re­cruit­ment of 50 world class re­searchers, writ­ers/speak­ers and busi­ness­men to con­tribute dur­ing the event.

"Busi­ness to busi­ness meet­ings were arranged be­tween our cham­bers and those from across the hemi­sphere," he said.

Re­spond­ing to the min­is­ter's claim that T&T's com­pet­i­tive­ness score did not im­prove fol­low­ing the stag­ing of the ACF, the op­po­si­tion MP ac­cused Robin­son-Reg­is of "ped­dling ig­no­rance and mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion" and point­ed out that T&T rose three points in 2014 but be­fore that had de­clined every year for a decade.

He said: "The cost of the ACF 2014 was mod­est com­pared to the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as of 2009 and they could not even col­lec­tive­ly sign the POS de­c­la­ra­tion at the end and they got Oba­ma vex too.

"The hemi­spher­ic busi­ness sec­tor which gath­ered here in 2014 in­vit­ed then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bises­sar as a fea­ture speak­er at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as 2015 in Pana­ma."

Tewarie said ben­e­fits from the ACF are still to ac­crue and T&T has al­ready ob­tained a non en­er­gy in­vest­ment from El Sal­vador, with more ex­pect­ed from Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca.

"Coun­tries com­pete to hold this fo­rum. Three were held in the US, oth­ers were held in Pana­ma and Co­lum­bia, the next is in Guatemala," he said.

Fol­low­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee of Fi­nance on Mon­day, Robin­son-Reg­is told re­porters: "We have clear ev­i­dence of the Amer­i­c­as Com­pet­i­tive­ness Fo­rum cost­ing in the re­gion of $40 mil­lion for prob­a­bly about three days and our com­pet­i­tive­ness in­dex did not im­prove.

She added: "$40 mil­lion was spent on a three or four-day fo­rum, ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cor­rup­tion in­dex in­creased and so we have that to grap­ple with in that min­istry."

The ACF, which was de­vel­oped and first host­ed by the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Com­merce in At­lanta, Geor­gia in 2007, brings to­geth­er pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment lead­ers from through­out the Amer­i­c­as to share best prac­tices for en­hanc­ing the re­gion's com­pet­i­tive­ness, in­no­va­tion and pros­per­i­ty.