Cabinet has granted its no objection to the award of a $227.1M contract for the completion and modification of the Clico building in Georgetown, so that it could be occupied by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Dr Roger Luncheon said on Wednesday.
The building, located on Camp Street between Quamina and Middle streets, was put up for sale as part of the disposal of the assets of Clico Guyana, after its collapse. The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) later bought the building for $600M.
Luncheon, the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, was speaking to reporters at a post-Cabinet press briefing.
In responding to questions about the building, Luncheon disclosed that the acquisition of the building by NIS “did indeed allow for the value of $600 million to be offset from the outstanding indebtedness of the liquidator so indeed that $600M has been used to offset some of the $5B that is still outstanding to NIS.”
He added that the funding that has been identified in the contract award was invested to reconfigure the building, particularly its electrical component, in order to provide clean power and to provide a suitable environment for the conduct of GRA business.
Luncheon said that the model for the recovery of rent has been applied in this case and “our anticipation is that the NIS would be receiving ten, ten point five odd million dollars monthly for the rental of the building to GRA.”
Since the building had been constructed several years ago, it was never occupied. It was announced last month that the building would undergo hundreds of millions of dollars in modifications to make it fit to house agency divisions.
