…says Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon
THE claim by the Alliance For Change (AFC) that government has not transferred funds from the National Industrial & Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) to the Consolidated Fund is nothing more than “monkey business” and “a figment of Ramjattan’s imagination, or whoever said that.” Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday so declared as he addressed his weekly post-Cabinet news conference at the Office of the President on Shiv Chanderpaul Drive in Georgetown.
The AFC had proposed that the value added tax (VAT) be reduced, but Government had rejected the proposal, pointing out that should that be done, enough money would not be available to meet other expenses.
AFC had then suggested that NICIL has billions of dollars that could be brought into the Consolidated Fund for people to access; and thereafter charged that a lot of revenue was being stolen.
“Were they (AFC) to (ask for) a valuation of assets — fixed, movable and immovable – (it) might allow one to be more encouragingly inclined to look at numbers like that. But this notion that there is a pot of gold, $50B inside, sitting somewhere in the bank account of NICIL is just an imagination,” Luncheon pointed out yesterday.
“Those who are trying to foist on the public all of this hype about NICIL and a slush fund patently are refusing to bring to the public’s attention to [the Articles of Association of NICIL]. When we are more comfortable with what is provided for in the Articles of Association, I then believe we can talk about NICIL and its future.
“Any other effort that ignores a comprehensive understanding of what the Articles of Association allow for is purely a waste of time. It’s just pandering to the gimmickry of Ramjattan,” Luncheon offered.
At his last press conference, Luncheon expressed how disturbed, and even annoyed, he was over the issue, explaining that NICIL is a private company and that the articles of association of the company impose no obligation on the government to take the action AFC wanted.
“There are 20-something articles that underpin the creation of NICIL, and none of them says that money from NICIL has to be put into the Consolidated Fund. None of it,” Luncheon declared.