The con­tro­ver­sial fi­nan­cial com­plex in down­town Scar­bor­ough will be of­fi­cial­ly opened on June 18 in a cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by the Sec­re­tary of Fi­nance and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Dr Anselm Lon­don. THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don will cut the rib­bon and un­veil a plaque to com­mem­o­rate the event.

The build­ing will be named the Vic­tor E Bruce Fi­nan­cial Com­plex af­ter the first lo­cal gov­er­nor of the T&T Cen­tral Bank, To­ba­go-born Vic­tor E Bruce. The com­plex has been the talk­ing point on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms of the mi­nor­i­ty To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) for most of its five-year pe­ri­od of con­struc­tion by H Lewis Con­struc­tion, of Cara­pichaima in Cen­tral Trinidad.

The project, of which state-owned Ude­cott was project man­ag­er, cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly $103 mil­lion. The Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment's con­tri­bu­tion was $16.7 mil­lion. Con­tro­ver­sy arose two weeks ago over the hand­ing over of the keys to the build­ing by Min­is­ter of Hous­ing Roodal Mooni­lal at a cer­e­mo­ny sched­uled for June 1.

Chief Sec­re­tary Lon­don and Fi­nance Sec­re­tary Dr Lon­don stout­ly ob­ject­ed claim­ing that it was a THA project for which Ude­cott was paid a fee for its ser­vices. The cer­e­mo­ny was even­tu­al­ly can­celled. The four-storey com­plex will house all de­part­ments of the Fi­nance and En­ter­prise Di­vi­sion and the Fi­nance Min­istry's In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment from Mon­day.

Dr Lon­don will present the As­sem­bly's rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture bud­get for fis­cal 2013 at a spe­cial sit­ting of the House of As­sem­bly on June 25 at 10 am. The de­bate on the bud­get will take place on June 28.