Bridgetown.
Several senior officials of the National Housing Corporation were summoned to give evidence before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday under the chairmanship of Leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley.
At the end of the hour-and-a-half long session in the Senate chamber, the Barbados Labour Party leader and other committee members were still searching for answers to several questions about the NHC’s financial management.
Mottley also found herself fending off suggestions from Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Senator Jepter Ince, one of Government’s representatives on the PAC, who objected to Mottley’s line of questioning and that of other BLP colleagues, Senators Dr. Jerome Walcott and Wilfred Abrahams, likening it to a commission of enquiry.
The NHC was represented at meeting, which was broadcast to the public and in held the presence of the media, by Ministry of Housing, Lands and Rural Development Permanent Secretary, Ronald Bascombe, General Manager Lynette Napoleon-Young, Financial Controller, Carolyn Barton and Chief Legal Officer, Henrietta Bourne-Forde.
After Barton revealed that her organisation was receiving $2.46 million each month from the Treasury and considered it a grant, Acting Accountant General Dane Coppin said his department considered it an advance to be repaid.
This prompted Mottley to ask Trotman for his opinion based on the law and he responded: “The Financial Management Act does allow the Government to advance sums to state enterprises, but there are certain conditions. They must have some agreement to determine the interest rate that will be paid and that type of thing for advances.
“The Ministry of Finance can instruct the Treasury to make advances, but the major point is that if it’s to a Government agency it should be by way of a loan agreement or debenture mortgage depending on the circumstances agreed to by Cabinet. In my opinion, any money that is advanced should have parliamentary approval,” he added.
