Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter, Roodal Mooni­lal, says the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to stamp­ing out cor­rup­tion in T&T. Mooni­lal was speak­ing dur­ing an ad­dress at yes­ter­day's an­ti-cor­rup­tion con­fer­ence host­ed by the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute at the Trinidad Hilton. Mooni­lal al­so gave more de­tails about the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI). He said the EITI's in­ter­na­tion­al board of di­rec­tors has set Au­gust 28, 2013 as the date for T&T to achieve EITI Com­pli­ant Coun­try Sta­tus. Mooni­lal said when T&T be­came EITI com­pli­ant, "we ex­pect our in­vest­ment to im­prove, po­lit­i­cal and rep­u­ta­tion­al risks will be mit­i­gat­ed and there will be more in­for­ma­tion on rev­enues in the pub­lic do­main."

Mooni­lal said: "The EITI will cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment for a re­duc­tion in cor­rup­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go by mak­ing our Gov­ern­ment more ac­count­able for rev­enue flows from the ex­trac­tive sec­tor." He said the 2010 Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex (CPI) ranked T&T 73rd of the 178 coun­tries as­sessed. Mooni­lal said the in­dex cap­tured in­for­ma­tion about the ad­min­is­tra­tive and po­lit­i­cal as­pects of cor­rup­tion, in­clud­ing bribery of pub­lic of­fi­cials, 'kick­backs' in pub­lic pro­cure­ment, em­bez­zle­ment of pub­lic funds and the strength and ef­fec­tive­ness of the pub­lic sec­tor an­ti-cor­rup­tion ef­forts. Mooni­lal said a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee was ap­point­ed to con­sid­er and re­port on the leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al to pro­vide for pub­lic pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty to­geth­er with leg­isla­tive pro­pos­al to re­peal and re­place the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act. Mooni­lal said the Min­istry of Fi­nance, in ex­am­in­ing the pro­cure­ment prac­tices of State En­ter­pris­es, had in­tro­duced the e-Auc­tion ini­tia­tive.