By Clinton Urling
Last week, Mr Keith Burrowes was appointed the non-executive Chief Executive Officer of the struggling national investment agency Go-Invest. A quick aside, I’m still perplexed as to what constitutes a non-executive CEO and therein lays the introduction to the following concerns. It is not clear if Mr Burrowes will continue as chairman of the agency’s board of directors but if he continues in that capacity, he will both manage and coordinate the agency’s day-to day affairs and lead the team responsible for supervising his performance as chief administrator. This approach does not align with good corporate governance standards and we hope the government will conduct the proper search to find a qualified successor to Mr Burrowes as chairman of the board of directors.
Another recent development surrounding the agency arises from the acknowledgement that the combined parliamentary opposition in Parliament did not lend its support toward approving the agency’s budgetary allocations.
This leaves the future and faith of the agency in limbo and we will have to wait and see how the agency will continue to operate.
The unfortunate approach of rejecting budgetary funding will affect the functions and operations of many critical state and parastatal agencies,