Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon has said that when the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has completed its move to the former Clico office building on Camp Street, it will finalise the terms of occupancy with the owner, the National Insurance Scheme (NIS).
He was speaking at his weekly post-Cabinet press conference held at the Office of the President on Thursday.
“Cabinet was updated by its task force appointed to oversee the GRA’s new offices at Camp Street,” Dr Luncheon, also Chairman of the Board of the NIS, said. “The task force appointed by Cabinet said that by the end of December 2012, there would be a complete transition. The VAT unit has already moved over to Camp Street,” he said.
Asked about the cost of the rental, he said that he did not know the cost of rental or lease, but “Massa Cow… Massa Bull!”
The NIS acquired the Clico building as part of the liquidation of Clico.
Dr Luncheon said the building will require significant and continuous upgrading and noted that the task force has developed a plan. “Millions will have to be spent to implement that plan. When it’s all done the two (NIS and GRA) will sit and work out an arrangement,” he said.
The GRA had hired a consultancy firm at a cost of $4.5 million under a competitive bidding process to prepare the building for occupancy. In May, Dr Luncheon had announced a Cabinet no-objection to the award of a $227.1 million contract to complete and modify the building so that it could be occupied by the GRA.
At that time, Commissioner General of the GRA Khurshid Sattaur had noted that the cost of leasing the building should not exceed what it would have cost to rent all the buildings that the GRA had occupied at that time.
Luncheon had said at a press conference that the GRA would have been paying a monthly rental of $10 million but at a later press conference he stated he had made an error.
The departments to be housed in the Camp Street building are the Customs and Trade Administration, now on Main Street; the Licence Revenue Division, now on Princes and Smyth streets; and the Human Resources and Finance Division and the GRA Secretariat.
