HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, yesterday stated that the litigation brought against Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh for unauthorised spending is wholly unnecessary.
The litigation was brought against the Minister by the Parliamentary Opposition A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance For Change. Dr. Luncheon was speaking at his post-Cabinet media briefing. He noted that while the issue is simple, “at the end of the day, this issue of public expenditure management and allegations by the parliamentary Opposition of unconstitutional and unauthorised spending by the Minister of Finance continues to plague our society, our media in this the electoral season. We strongly suspect, believe that it could be transformed into an electoral issue.”
He explained that the unconstitutional expenditure of public funds, a claim made by the parliamentary Opposition, continues to be the same. “The Government executed a loan agreement with an international financial institution, and that loan provided a certain sum of money. This loan was a policy based loan.”
He added that such a loan is when Government undertakes to implement certain policies, and in this case it was in the environmental sector, particularly environmental protection. The loan saw Government committing to implement, introduce, and adhere to certain policies on environment and environmental protection for which Government would receive a certain sum of money.
Dr. Luncheon stated that while the board of the international financial institution approved the loan, the funds were disbursed to Guyana. The Opposition then moved to the court to block expenditure of those funds, a move which he indicated was totally unnecessary.
“…it was known to be unnecessary at the time the Opposition moved to the court for litigation. I have said it is a totally meaningless allegation because for policy based loans, funds are not spent,” Dr. Luncheon stated.
The proceeds of the loan were deposited in the Consolidated Fund and remain there. The undertakings which Government had made were being met without expenditure from these proceeds from the international financial institution, he added.
“Our point is that the Opposition knew that the funds would be one, deposited in the Consolidated Fund, and two, that expenditure would not be incurred, and yet as the AG insists, they sought to abuse the court and take this matter to litigation,” Dr. Luncheon added.
He observed that this was a move by the Opposition to gain media attention, as well as to keep alive this issue of public expenditure management and the Opposition’s allegations that “Minister Dr. Ashni Singh was indeed unconstitutionally spending funds from the Consolidated Fund.”
Minister Singh gave an undertaking at Cabinet to provide, in the greatest detail, the information that supported Dr. Luncheon’s disclosure … and indeed to go into greater detail on the handling, not only of policy based loans, but also of project loans, which was not a matter that the Opposition raised in their litigation. They dealt specifically with this policy based loan in the environmental sector,” Dr. Luncheon concluded.
During last week’s media briefing, Dr. Luncheon had indicated that the litigation was used as a ‘smoke screen,’ to continue to bring to the public’s attention the issue of Minister Singh’s spending and issues surrounding public expenditure manner.(GINA)