Gail Alexan­der

No un­law­ful dis­clo­sure of peo­ple's pri­vate bank­ing in­for­ma­tion will be done by Gov­ern­ment.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day re­fused to an­swer an Op­po­si­tion UNC query which had called for him to pro­vide a list of the ten largest re­cip­i­ents of for­eign ex­change for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1st, 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2022.

The ques­tion was list­ed as be­ing posed by UNC's Moru­ga MP Michelle Ben­jamin.

Im­bert re­ply­ing, said," This is a sur­pris­ing ques­tion. It is a mat­ter of record that the pub­lic dis­clo­sure by a for­mer Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank in 2015 of the names of the largest re­cip­i­ents of for­eign ex­change at that time, in con­tra­ven­tion of Sec­tion 56 of the Cen­tral Bank Act Chap. 79:02 and Sec­tion 44 of the Ex­change Con­trol Act Chap. 79:50 cre­at­ed a pub­lic con­fla­gra­tion."

"The fact that this was an egre­gious breach of bank­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty has been missed by many com­men­ta­tors re­cent­ly. This is in­for­ma­tion with­in the bo­som of the Cen­tral Bank which they and oth­er fi­nan­cial in­struc­tions are for­bid­den from dis­clos­ing un­der penal­ty of law."

He added, "Dis­clo­sure of this in­for­ma­tion will de­stroy the con­fi­dence which clients have in the Cen­tral Bank, and in fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, that their pri­vate bank­ing in­for­ma­tion will not be dis­closed with­out their con­sent. Fur­ther, un­law­ful dis­clo­sure of pri­vate bank­ing in­for­ma­tion could nev­er be in the pub­lic in­ter­est, no mat­ter what the cir­cum­stances may be."

"It would be ir­ra­tional, un­law­ful, ir­re­spon­si­ble and an abuse of pow­er for me as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to en­gage in such a breach of trust and I have no in­ten­tion of ever do­ing so."

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan al­so de­tailed work done and con­tin­u­ing in this fis­cal year on land­slips on the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro high­way, sec­tions of which from Princes Town through Rio Claro are prone to land­slips and slope fail­ures due to soil com­po­si­tion.

The High­ways Di­vi­sion will al­so be do­ing in­ter­im road restora­tion where an­oth­er crit­i­cal land­slip is lo­cat­ed at Robert Vil­lage. "Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the PURE Unit will be un­der­tak­ing sig­nif­i­cant road re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion works along the Na­pari­ma Ma­yaro Road be­tween the 38km – 41km mark un­der its pro­gramme for this fis­cal year "

Sinanan spoke about work on St. Julien Road - where there are four land­slips - in­clud­ing slope sta­bi­liza­tion and oth­er re­pair plus pro­cure­ment for fur­ther work to com­mence by March.

Sinanan said on­go­ing con­struc­tion of the high­way from Cu­mu­to to Man­zanil­la- which be­gan in 2018- in­cludes sec­ond pri­or­i­ty for con­struc­tion of 1.7 km road­way from the end of Pack­age 1B to the East­ern Main Road. " Con­struc­tion of this seg­ment is ex­pect­ed to com­mence in 2023."

On re­con­struc­tion of the Cal­too bridge which was halt­ed due to weath­er con­straints, he added, "Once weath­er con­di­tions be­come favourable, on-site works will com­mence with the ex­ca­va­tion for the by-pass chan­nel. We're still tar­get­ing May 2023 for com­ple­tion, bar­ring un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances..."