THE Office of the Prime Minister has corrected what it says are several misleading statements in a Guyana Times article early this week.
The article was premised on the Auditor-General’s report.
Below is the full statement by the OPM:
THE Office of the Prime Minister has taken note of an article on page 5 of the Tuesday October 18th, 2016 edition of the Guyana Times. The article references the Auditor-General’s 2015 report and highlights matters as follows:
1.That the Office of the Prime Minister in December 2015, “Requested an advance of $11 million from the Contingencies Fund and stated the reason for the advance was for the Government Information Agency (GINA) to offset a part of its debt to the Guyana National Newspapers Limited (GNNL), publisher of the Guyana Chronicle newspaper.”
The Guyana Times stated further that a portion of that sum was used to pay non-tax bonuses to GINA employees. OPM RESPONSE: The new government inherited a GINA debt to GNNL incurred by the previous PPP government of $74,091,147 which had accumulated between June 2014 and May 2015.
The previous administration had embarked on a propaganda frenzy from January to May 2015 just prior to the National and Regional elections when $26,282,740 was spent on advertising in the Guyana Chronicle. GINA had no resources from its funds to meet that debt and the GNNL Board of Directors raised this matter with the Office of the Prime Minister.
FACTS: (i) The amount of $11,000,000 was received by GINA and accounted for via receipts #1003 and #1004 issued to the Office of the Prime Minister on January 7, 2016.
(ii) A total payment of $15,720,588 was made to GNNL on January 8, 2016 on invoices for the period July to August 2014. The full amount of $11,000,000 received by GINA from government was included in this payment and therefore fully used for the purposes intended. The additional $4,720,588 was paid from GINA’s budget.
(iii) GNNL formally acknowledged receipt via receipt #229916.
The Guyana Times report therefore is not factual.
2. That “The AG Report stated that under the Office’s Capital Expenditure, a sum of $19.405 million was used to purchase a $5.3 million Toyota Corolla car, a motorcycle at a cost of $203,000 and a Toyota Land Cruiser valued at $13.8million. Sharma said that while the Office would have received the car and motorcycle, the issue was with the Landcruiser. He explained in his report that the procurement of the new Toyota Landcruiser was awarded to the lone bidder and according to the quotation, 50 per cent of the cost must be paid on “Firm Order”, while the remaining 50 per cent is to be paid on delivery. However, the full amount was paid to the supplier on 4 January 2016 via cheques numbered 05-612925 and 05-612926. Notwithstanding this, the vehicle was delivered in September 2016.”
OPM RESPONSE: (i) OPM was advised by the supplier that there had been a fire at one of Toyota’s factories in Japan, thereby causing a significant delay in delivery of the vehicle. During this period, the Prime Minister continued to utilise, mainly for hinterland assignments, an old Landcruiser which was inherited from the former Prime Minister.
(ii) OPM is pleased that the Guyana Times has finally admitted the fact that the cost of the vehicle is $13.8million and NOT $23million as it had falsely peddled before.
(iii) OPM wishes to restate that under the previous administration the sum of $23,000,000 was budgeted and approved for the purchase of a new Toyota Landcruiser for former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds in the 2014 budget. That sum was misappropriated and spent on vehicles for another minister. That amount was restored to OPM in the 2015 budget and has been used to buy three vehicles, not one. OPM is proud of the efforts to help restore accountability and transparency in Guyana and to stop the unlawful use of taxpayers’ monies that had characterised the former regime.