The Fi­nance Min­istry is beef­ing up the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion’s se­cu­ri­ty with 24-hour ser­vice “for very good rea­son”, be­cause there are a lot of crim­i­nals around and the Trea­sury deals with cash, says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

Im­bert spoke yes­ter­day about this and oth­er mat­ters in the min­istry, which re­ceived $7.5 bil­lion in the 2024 Bud­get, dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment.

Im­bert was ques­tioned on items in Bud­get doc­u­ments by Op­po­si­tion MPs Dave Tan­coo, David Lee, Rush­ton Paray and Ravi Rati­ram dur­ing the ses­sion.

Tan­coo queried the fact that the min­istry had a $14 mil­lion fig­ure for se­cu­ri­ty in 2023 and while it was not all used, the same amount was al­lo­cat­ed for 2024.

Im­bert said that was be­cause “we want our se­cu­ri­ty up to full strength”.

“Pri­mar­i­ly, our se­cu­ri­ty is pro­vid­ed by MTS (Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed), but I’ll de­ter­mine whether there’s ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty fol­low­ing,” Im­bert said.

There was a $16.5m min­istry al­lo­ca­tion for im­por­tant re­pairs/main­te­nance in 2023, but on­ly $3m was spent and the $16.5m fig­ure is re­turned for 2024. Im­bert said the orig­i­nal fig­ure was for re­pairs to the vault and safes, main­te­nance sup­port, ex­tra da­ta stor­age, com­put­er equip­ment and soft/hard­ware up­grades—and al­so on the pay­roll.

“You have to un­der­stand, the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion process­es all pay­ments in the pub­lic ser­vice so it needs a very so­phis­ti­cat­ed com­put­er sys­tem,” he added.

Im­bert said there would have been some pro­cure­ment is­sues.

“It would have been de­layed but this is very im­por­tant ex­pen­di­ture, so we put back the $16.5 mil­lion (in the 2024 Bud­get doc­u­ments).”

On the re­quest for $5 mil­lion more for se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices spend­ing at the Trea­sury, Im­bert ex­plained, “We are beef­ing up se­cu­ri­ty at the Trea­sury for very good rea­son and a con­tract was re­cent­ly award­ed a short while ago and there­fore we ex­pect in­creased ex­pen­di­ture.

“We’re now go­ing to have 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty be­cause there are a lot of crim­i­nals around and the Trea­sury deals with cash. It’s the one that has to process large quan­ti­ties of cash re­ceived at the Dis­trict Rev­enue Of­fices, which then have to be trans­port­ed to the Cen­tral Bank.

“There has been—and you’d have read about it in the pa­pers- is­sues of peo­ple mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing cash so we beef­ing up se­cu­ri­ty, you wouldn’t want tax­pay­ers cash to dis­ap­pear,” Im­bert told Tan­coo.

Over $300M spent on CAL

Im­bert al­so spoke frankly on the length of time it has tak­en to con­clude the wind­ing up of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd. “I must tell you I’m hop­ing I could spend the whole $10 mil­lion (al­lo­cat­ed for the mat­ter) this year. I’m tired of this item and I’m hop­ing in 2024 we’ll make a lot of progress,” he said.

“Re­mem­ber, you’re wind­ing up that com­pa­ny. So, there’s lit­i­ga­tion, all sorts of out­stand­ing mat­ters. It’s just drag­ging on for­ev­er, so what was hoped to be achieved in 2023 was not achieved.

“But I hope to spend that $10 mil­lion and maybe more in 2024. I’d re­al­ly like to put this mat­ter to bed—deal with all the out­stand­ing is­sues, the griev­ances. I have peo­ple who mes­sage me al­most every week be­cause of some is­sue.”

He al­so con­firmed fi­nan­cial pro­vi­sions by the min­istry for court cas­es—the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed mat­ter and an­oth­er is­sue—adding he hoped the Gov­ern­ment would win the cas­es. He con­firmed a $25 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for con­sul­tants, ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices and le­gal coun­sels.

“We’re get­ting sued by the UNC dai­ly—that (fig­ure) might be an un­der­es­ti­mate.”

Im­bert al­so re­vealed full fund­ing for var­i­ous di­vi­sions for pay­ment of ar­rears on phone bills and T&TEC. He hoped to clear the TSTT bills and re­solve all queries and T&TEC bills.

Im­bert said the min­istry was pay­ing $133m for cer­tain loans for Caribbean Air­lines—for air­craft. He told Tan­coo he should tell the pi­lots about the items for this in Bud­get doc­u­ments, “as they don’t seem to know the min­istry is pay­ing for all of the loans that CAL has tak­en out for the ATRs planes —$133m. This is on­ly part of the mon­ey we pay to­wards the CAL sub­sidy.”

“Maybe you might know one or two pi­lots, maybe one of the ones who de­cid­ed that they ‘fell ill’,” Im­bert added.

He al­so spoke about an­oth­er $178m pay­ment for CAL by the min­istry.

‘Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion like mo­lasses—slow’

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­so spoke of the is­sues with the pace of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion in fill­ing posts.

“They are like mo­lasses, just slow.”

On staffing al­lo­ca­tion for the Board of In­land Rev­enue, Im­bert said no posts were filled in 2023 and he hopes they will be filled in 2024. He ex­plained that the fill­ing of posts there is done by the com­mis­sion and every ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing the UNC, had tried to get the PSC to speed up fill­ing posts.

He said they were still not be­ing filled as quick­ly as they should be. On Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion staffing al­lo­ca­tion, Im­bert al­so cit­ed the PSC sit­u­a­tion.

“It’s some­thing we in­her­it­ed with our Con­sti­tu­tion—that we can’t fill posts, we have to get the PSC to do it and they are like mo­lasses—just slow.

“No mat­ter how we urge them and it’s hap­pened to all Gov­ern­ments— it’s not unique to this Gov­ern­ment—they slow. So we try­ing, we hope­ful,” he said.

Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment hopes to com­mis­sion the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal in 2025. He said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so hope­ful to have a new line of busi­ness pro­vid­ed by Alutrint on the pro­duc­tion of alu­minum prod­ucts—but not smelt­ing.

He said the $169m es­ti­mate for Food Cards in 2024 was a “mov­ing tar­get” due to the pro­gramme’s na­ture.

He said $1b was not spent on the In­fra­struc­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Fund in 2023 due to the learn­ing curve with pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions. That al­so af­fect­ed ob­tain­ing of­fice equip­ment for the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion.

Im­bert al­so said the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board will be con­struct­ing a new build­ing, as work­ers have been in cramped con­di­tions. He said loan fi­nanc­ing may be done for this.