A “repetition of falsehoods” is the term used by the Ministry of Finance to describe recent utterances by former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan, in relation to a number of fiscal matters.

In a missive issued last evening, the ministry responded to Jordan’s claims, point by point. Firstly, it was clarified that contrary to Jordan’s statements, it is common for senior officers within the Ministry of Finance to sign loan requests sent to various organisations or bilateral partners.

Jordan was quoted in a November 8th Kaieteur News article as saying that he was “astonished that a senior ministry official signed a loan request letter sent to the Chinese Ambassador.

“While the finance minister is the only authority empowered to sign loan agreements, it is routine practice for senior technical staff of the Ministry of Finance to communicate with donors and development partners throughout the project cycle, including at the earliest stages of mobilising resources to fund projects,” the ministry’s statement noted.

It also admitted that indeed, the Head of the ministry’s Project Cycle Management Division, which is charged with responsibility for resource mobilisation, “has always been the lead government interlocutor with development partners and has been engaged in communication with development partners on issues of resource mobilisation for many, many years.”

Even further, the ministry issued copies of similar loan request letters signed by the same ministry official during Jordan’s tenure as finance minister.

“For Mr. Jordan to insinuate that there is something irregular about this, is a clear indication that he is either woefully unfamiliar with a well-established practice that continued under his tenure, or that he is aware of this practice but would still dishonestly seek to insinuate that something is irregular about it, in an obvious attempt to mislead those who don’t know otherwise,” the ministry said.

NATURAL RESOURCES FUND
The ministry also responded to statements made by Jordan which “attempted to give the impression” that the former A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) Government crafted a “superlative Natural Resources Fund (NRF)”.

In a November 8th letter published in the Stabroek News, Jordan said that “the NRF Act was the product of extensive national and international consultations.” However, this was disputed by the Finance Ministry, headed by Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh.

The ministry pointed to the fact that Jordan, in his letter, “conveniently omitted to disclose that that NRF Act was rushed through the National Assembly” even after the then government lost a No-Confidence Motion (NCM) in December 2018, thereby losing its mandate to govern.

“In total disregard for the clear consequences that are constitutionally due to flow from a NCM, Jordan’s government rushed, in January 2019, to sneak the NRF Bill through Parliament with no Opposition participation and no Opposition input. Here again, his letter is replete with brazen misrepresentations,” the ministry posited.

It also pointed to the fact that just recently the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) issued a publication titled “Economic Institutions for a Resilient Caribbean” which highlighted that the objectives and design of Guyana’s NRF raise several issues. “The fund on its own cannot achieve the objectives that have been set for it. The rigid withdrawal rules may do little to foster stabilisation or saving but may entail fiscal costs,” the report noted.

It also outlined that the formula for the maximum permissible withdrawal is among the most complex operational rules for a resource fund in the world. “Its design departs from good practices,” the IDB argued.

The report noted too that the “state-of-the-art advice based on international experience and good fiscal management principles emphasises simplicity, flexibility, transparency, and close integration with the budget and public asset-liability management,” and that the rule’s complexity may also “conspire against fiscal transparency and public understanding”.

The Finance Ministry is adamant that the “irrefutable fact of the matter is that the NRF Act in its current formulation was a piece of legislation which was very poorly conceived, and was ‘rammed down the throats’ of the nation during a period when the APNU+AFC was in a state of illegality and illegitimacy.”

BURGEONING OVERDRAFT
The ministry was also keen to respond to Jordan’s statements relating to a “burgeoning overdraft of the consolidated fund”. It contended that it is a matter of public record that under Jordan’s tenure, the former government ignored the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the ministry’s technical staff, and “refused to address the rapid accumulation of the overdraft”.

The Finance Ministry’s press release indicated that under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government, the overdraft was “regularised” and securitised with appropriate debt instruments, and putting in place arrangements to ensure that the fiscal operations of government are adequately financed without recourse to re-accumulation of the overdraft.

“Despite this publicly known fact, Jordan soldiers on, continuing to repeat yet another falsehood,” the Finance Ministry lamented.

THE SIGNING BONUS REVISITED
The ministry also called out Jordan for presiding over the “illegal diversion of the US$18 million signing bonus from the Consolidated Fund” and into a “secret bank account”. The ministry said that according to the law, the bonus was supposed to have been deposited into the Consolidated Fund.

“He [Jordan] is yet to state publicly under what law and by what legal authority that amount was diverted from the Consolidated Fund and secretly stashed away to finance unknown activities, bypassing the budgetary and appropriation process,” the ministry said.

It noted too that “even more astonishingly, Jordan famously denied any knowledge of the existence of the signing bonus, long after his own ministry had requested in writing the opening of a special bank account to receive the funds”.

The Finance Ministry’s statement also accused Jordan of displaying a behavioural pattern of attempting to mislead the nation. “It would be recalled that at one of his first sittings in Parliament in 2015, he attempted to mislead the nation by quoting incorrect debt numbers, a matter on which, after he was challenged on the accuracy of his statements, he would subsequently reluctantly apologise to the Assembly for the misinformation he was caught peddling redhandedly and for creating an erroneous impression,” the statement reminded.

It surmised that Jordan’s public pronouncements “provide ample illustration that, contrary to his often-repeated self-proclamation as a professional, Winston Jordan has no hesitation to distort facts in order to mislead the nation”.