Gov­ern­ment has signed a loan agree­ment for US$100 mil­lion ($639 mil­lion) from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB). Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an said the loan would be used to fund the Pub­lic Cap­i­tal Ex­pen­di­ture Man­age­ment Pro­gramme, aimed at en­sur­ing sus­tained pub­lic cap­i­tal in­vest­ment.

He was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny held at the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. Dook­er­an said, "We recog­nise the stim­u­la­tion of growth in the econ­o­my re­quires sus­tained cap­i­tal in­vest­ment. How­ev­er, a new type of in­vest­ment must take place. Pub­lic cap­i­tal in­vest­ment must now gen­er­ate more yield on every dol­lar of ex­pen­di­ture so that growth could be re­alised in the short­est pos­si­ble time frame.

"We are there­fore adopt­ing a three-pronged ap­proach in the area of pub­lic cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture man­age­ment." He said the loan would be used to mod­ernise the pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment man­age­ment sys­tem, im­prove ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy in pub­lic pro­cure­ment and en­hance pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and con­trol sys­tems.

Dook­er­an said the first stage of the plan is to ad­dress weak­ness­es in pub­lic in­vest­ment man­age­ment. The sec­ond phase, he said, is pub­lic fi­nan­cial man­age­ment aimed at tak­ing im­por­tant steps to­wards "achiev­ing a bud­getary process to be ful­ly ca­pa­ble of the strate­gic al­lo­ca­tion of re­sources."

Dook­er­an said the third stage is the strength­en­ing of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's de­part­ment. He said, "The third prong seeks to en­hance the in­tegri­ty of the Gov­ern­ment's fi­nan­cial man­age­ment op­er­a­tions by re­in­forc­ing the in­de­pen­dence of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's de­part­ment and strength­en­ing its over­sight op­er­a­tions."

Dook­er­an said, "This dis­burse­ment of US $100 mil­lion on our fis­cal ac­count is par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­come in this bud­get year giv­en the many chal­lenges that we face." IDB res­i­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive Iwan Miss­er said Gov­ern­ment re­forms that had to be made to qual­i­fy for the loan were: the pro­gramme must in­clude pol­i­cy de­sign; pub­lic pro­cure­ment and fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and au­dit.

Miss­er said the loan was for twen­ty years with a five year grace pe­ri­od. Fi­nance Min­istry deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Michael Mendez said the loan would re­sult in the "the tran­si­tion to a mul­ti-lay­er frame­work, strength­en­ing of our in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial man­age­ment sys­tem and as a ba­sis for the even­tu­al in­tro­duc­tion of our per­for­mance-based bud­get­ing."