Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Vish­nu Dhan­paul said he was not com­fort­able with the state of this coun­try’s over­drawn Ex­che­quer Ac­count or as it com­mon­ly called the Trea­sury.

The ac­count stands at $40 bil­lion, the biggest in this coun­try’s his­to­ry.

He was an­swer­ing a ques­tion from PAC Chair­man Dr Bhoe Tewarie about the ac­count when he ap­peared be­fore a Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) of Par­lia­ment.

Dhan­paul said he could not be pleased with the fig­ure and would rather it not be like this.

He said the ac­count ran up with Gov­ern­ment’s over­draft draw­down and ways to bring it down were by re­duced spend­ing, stay­ing with­in means and gen­er­at­ing rev­enue.

He said a fis­cal sur­plus would bur­den the Cen­tral Bank.

Dhan­paul al­so said he ex­pect­ed Fi­nance’s In­te­grat­ed Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tems (IMFS) to come on stream next year and this would ex­pe­dite pen­sion and gra­tu­ity pay­ments.

Ide­al­ly, he said he want­ed to see peo­ple re­tir­ing to­day and get­ting pen­sion the next day. He said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion was a ma­jor “bug­bear” for the Min­istry.

Dhan­paul added he did not think it was right for peo­ple to re­tire at 60-years-old and have to wait un­til they turned 62 or 63-years-old to get pen­sions.

Mean­time at the same meet­ing, Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Lorel­ly Pu­jadas said her of­fice want­ed to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion—such as VAT and ho­tel reg­is­tra­tion list­ing—from the Board of In­land Rev­enue to help track pos­si­ble rev­enue loss in the coun­try but was be­ing blocked due to BIR’s law on con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of in­for­ma­tion.

Pu­jadas said her of­fice was not seek­ing names or tax­pay­ers in­for­ma­tion but want­ed the in­for­ma­tion to help get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial stand­ing.

BIR chair­man Al­li­son Raphael said BIR’s law pre­vent­ed cer­tain in­for­ma­tion shar­ing since this could even un­der­mine the tax col­lec­tion process.

She not­ed tax pay­ment was vol­un­tary.

She said if the law was changed BIR would sup­port it. Natasha Bar­row from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice said the Min­istry con­tact­ed Fi­nance Min­istry to help re­solve the mat­ter but did not get a re­sponse.