Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has in­struct­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo to have the Cen­tral Bank Cen­tral Bank’s ac­counts au­dit­ed by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

Speak­ing dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion on the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Cen­tral Bank Act (Sec­tion 51) law was clear that the bank should be au­dit­ed an­nu­al­ly by au­di­tors ap­point­ed with the min­is­ter’s ap­proval and the min­is­ter will, at any time, re­quire the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to ex­am­ine CBTT’s ac­counts.

“Do not hide (CBTT’s) ac­counts,” she said, al­so de­clar­ing there’s “no hid­ing be­hind con­fi­den­tial­i­ty” ei­ther.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port showed $350.2 mil­lion was spent on short-term em­ploy­ment—an in­crease of 16.57 per cent from the pre­vi­ous year’s ex­pen­di­ture.

She not­ed that the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al could not ver­i­fy, val­i­date or ap­prove the ac­counts of the PNM gov­ern­ment for two years and for 2024, was un­able to ob­tain suf­fi­cient ap­pro­pri­ate au­dit ev­i­dence to pro­vide a ba­sis for an au­dit opin­ion.

Among is­sues was the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s in­abil­i­ty to ex­am­ine the Elec­tron­ic Cheque Clear­ing Sys­tem and “GoAny­where Plat­form” man­aged by the Cen­tral Bank, which didn’t ap­prove the ex­am­i­na­tion. It was not­ed that the CBTT re­strict­ed the scope, which frus­trat­ed the ex­am­i­na­tion process.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar cit­ed oth­er im­ped­i­ments list­ed, adding. “As a re­sult, sam­pled ex­pen­di­ture of $1.5 bil­lion could not be ver­i­fied - this is just one as­pect of the fis­cal may­hem we’ve in­her­it­ed from the pre­vi­ous regime.”

Ear­li­er this week, the Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed that Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass had opt­ed not to ac­cept the as­sign­ment to au­dit the Cen­tral Bank ac­counts.

Asked why the Cen­tral Bank end­ed the long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship by which the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al au­dit­ed the bank’s ac­count, the Cen­tral Bank said, “The Of­fice of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al in­di­cat­ed that it would not be in a po­si­tion to ac­cept an ap­point­ment as au­di­tor for the fi­nan­cial state­ments of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.”

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said short-term em­ploy­ment was an­oth­er “kind of slav­ery, as con­tract­ed work­ers couldn’t get mort­gages or loans. Ques­tion­ing who got con­tracts, she said there were many in­stances of per­sons be­ing kept on for con­tin­u­ous pe­ri­ods sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­ceed­ing six months with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“... A clas­sic case of ‘jobs for the boys and girls’ at tax­pay­ers’ ex­pense,” she said.

She said the cost of se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices for min­istries and de­part­ments to­talled $491.9m,”but, this couldn’t be ver­i­fied since con­tracts agree­ments for the pro­vi­sion of se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices were not seen to sup­port 84 per cent of to­tal ex­pen­di­ture in­curred.”—Gail Alexan­der