Public Works Minister Juan Edghill on Monday dodged questions from APNU+AFC MP David Patterson on the method the ministry will use to spend the large remainder of its 2022 budgetary allocation.
Patterson, the former minister of Public Infrastructure (now Public Works), while questioning the rationale behind the requested and now approved $18.1 billion in supplementary funding, told the House that from his information only 51% of the $88 billion budget for capital works has been spent.
Patterson on Monday used the opportunity to seek an explanation from Edghill on how he intends to spend the remaining $43 billion in the next 19 days.
Without denying the fact that only half of the budget had been spent, Edghill in his response to Patterson, told the House that his engineering team is currently advancing projects to ensure the monies are used up.
“In the implementation of your PSIP (Public Sector Investment Programme) where just one transaction can change the whole game because of the nature of that transaction. The size of just one transaction…” Edghill said as he told Patterson he should not be worried about how they are going to spend the remainder of the budget.
The subject minister stated that if anyone studies the 2022 budgetary allocation for his ministry they will see several mega projects to which the monies will be used. However, he did not identify the projects but gave the indication to the National Assembly that the money will be spent before the conclusion of the fiscal year.
In the same breath, he told Patterson that he will be provided with a full report of the ministry’s PSIP at the end of the year.
As Patterson sought to further question the mega projects in the pipeline, his questions were shot down by Speaker of the Assembly, Manzoor Nadir. He told the opposition member that he was only entertaining questions on the $18.1 billion line item. At that time, the Parliamentary Committee of Supply was considering the request for miscellaneous roads in communities across Guyana.
Edghill, while defending the request for the allocation, lobbed a counter-jab at Patterson by stating that the number of roads currently being constructed or under active construction far exceeds the amount of roads constructed in communities during Patterson tenure.
The minister stated that they have been actively rolling out the construction of roads in communities to upgrade and modernise the environs of the people.
Patterson, in a letter in today’s Stabroek News pointed out that at the end of November, the ministry had only been able to expend approximately 51% or about $45 billion of the $88 billion of their budgetary allocation – something the Minister did not deny.
“His response was that he was not in parliament to discuss budgetary expenditure, but rather there to talk about roads. But rather than discuss how these road contracts will get done in the short space of time or what will change in the process of the ministry being able to compliantly expend budgeted money – in a way that has not been done all year – it was ‘open mike’ and ‘poetry night’ at Parliament, with lots of empty headline making statements,” he wrote.
Patterson stated that upon looking at the numbers to achieve the targets in the headlines, MoPW would have to disburse approximately $43 billion over the next 19 working days, which equals to $2.3 billion per day.
“The opposition sought a response from the government by asking – if this agency was unable to expend their approved allocation in 11 months, how would it be possible to expend the extra $18.1B requested yesterday for miscellaneous roads? We questioned the quality of the works as well as the transparency of the process, the opportunity for corruption if this agency is now tasked with spending an additional $1B per day, over and above what was previously allocated.”
The dodging of pertinent questions, the member noted, is true to form, with the government waxing lyrical about everything else, save and except this issue.
Under Guyana’s financial laws, he reminded, all money allocated to agencies that has not been spent by the end of the 31st December of each year, has to be returned to the treasury – if you don’t spend it, you lose it.
