Bahamas
Governance reformers yesterday voiced “alarm” that the uncertainty surrounding the Fiscal Responsibility Council highlights a growing “trend” where public accountability and transparency “lack priority” within government.
Matt Aubry, the Organisation for Responsible Governance’s (ORG) executive director, told Tribune Business that the fiscal watchdog’s present ‘in limbo’ status is another example where the Davis administration appears to be “paying less attention” to building trust as opposed to focusing on other policy priorities.
Speaking after this newspaper revealed Council members are seeking clarity from Prime Minister Philip Davis KC as to whether their appointments are still valid, he also pointed to the “continued contravention” of both the initial and new Public Procurement Act due to the Government’s failure to publish details on contract awards within 60 days of their issuance.
“What I think alarms us about it is it’s yet another instance where we see a lack of clarity for the mechanisms of transparency and accountability, and the responsibility to give information to citizens,” Mr Aubry told this newspaper on the Council.
“When we look at that, it ultimately reinforces what we see as a trend – that there’s more and more instances of this lack of priority for government mechanisms…. What we’ve seen in the instance of the Freedom of Information Act, and maybe with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, is there is not the same level of attention to these issues when compared to the focus on others such as getting off blacklists and accessing more sources of revenue.
“These are just as critical, and maybe even more so, because when government enacts changes citizens can see whether they are aligned with their interests.” Tribune Business yesterday reached out to Latrae Rahming, the Prime Minister’s communications director, to seek government comment and inquire what it was doing to address Fiscal Responsibility Council member concerns as to whether their appointments are still valid.
This newspaper also asked the Government to address concerns that the Council is perceived to be less independent from government following enactment of the Public Finance Management Act 2023, which switched responsibility for its members’ appointment from the House of Assembly speaker to the minister of finance (now Mr Davis) – the very person whose ministry, and fiscal strategies, plans and actions, they are supposed to be scrutinising.
Mr Rahming acknowledged receiving Tribune Business’ questions and message, but no reply was received before press time last night. Gowon Bowe, the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) representative on the Fiscal Responsibility Council (FRC), explained he and his colleagues need confirmation if they remain members until their original appointments expire or if they are considered “terminated” due to the new Act coming into effect.
Given that the Council plays a critical role in The Bahamas’ enhanced fiscal transparency and accountability regime, he added that it was “in the best interests of the Government” and the nation to reassure the likes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) that there is no intention of “watering down” this framework.
The five-member Council plays a critical role since it is charged with examining whether the Government’s annual Budget, Fiscal Strategy Report and other measures align with set fiscal responsibility targets and principles. To-date, though, it has released just two assessments – on the 2020 Fiscal Strategy Report and the 2021-2022 Budget.
Mr Aubry yesterday said the Government’s decision to merge the Fiscal Responsibility Act into the Public Finance Management Act, consolidating both laws into one, has made the Council’s role “more important” because it has “reduced the opportunities for the public to learn and understand the fiscal strategy and financial position of the Government.
“It requires a more robust reporting schedule, and the importance of the Fiscal Responsibility Council achieving their mandate is critical,” he added. “We’ve seen even when the Fiscal Responsibility Act was in effect there was still not a frequent level of reporting, and a lack of clarity on when the Council would bring information forward or access the resources and funds to do their job appropriately.”
Asserting that this mechanism was a key component in building greater trust in government among Bahamians, Mr Aubry added: “If there’s less reporting and the mechanism is not in place, your fiscal responsibility is disengaged and not as robust. It affects your credit rating, which affects your borrowing costs, it affects local and international confidence in the fiscal strategy and position of The Bahamas.
“Given the clear focus on trying to drive new sources of revenue, you’d want that to be published, scrutinised and reflective of feedback and analysis by the experts on the Council. There’s a lot of benefit from having this mechanism, which does not have a long history, working.”
Mr Aubry said ORG holds similar concerns over “the continued contravention of the Public Procurement Act because there’s no public disclosure of which contracts have been awarded”. While the Government’s procurement website is “modern and accessible”, and provides a list of the different tenders and contracts out to bid, together with the identities of some winning bidders, he urged that “the back end” be enhanced to comply with the law.
This requires that the name of the winning bidder, the contract value and “what is expected of them” be published within 60 days of award but this has never been fully complied with since the first Act took effect on September 1, 2021, during the final days of the Minnis administration.
Mr Aubry said the Act’s purpose was to ensure government contracts are awarded fairly, rather than on the basis of patronage, political and family connections or some other arbitrary influences. If it worked, small Bahamian businesses would be encouraged to bid and, if they succeeded, they will grow themselves and the economy.
The Opposition, meanwhile, were quick to jump on what they termed the Government’s “inaction” over the Fiscal Responsibility Council. Kwasi Thompson, the Free National Movement’s (FNM) finance spokesman, accused the Government of “systematically decimating” transparency and accountability checks and balances that the former Minnis administration established.
“It was just wrong to move the jurisdiction of the Council from the Speaker to the minister of finance,” Mr Thompson said. “The Council members are correct; it is like the fox watching the hen house. It was wrong to move the funding from the Parliament to the Ministry of Finance. It was wrong to move the appointment of the Council from the Speaker to the minister of finance.
“The Davis administration has systematically decimated the accountability controls, particularly with respect to the Fiscal Responsibility Council.” Mr Thompson argued that the Government has yet to justify the changes to the Fiscal Responsibility Council, and added: “It is the people who suffer the most from not having the necessary reports of the Council, and the Government seems happy to simply ignore this important accountability control system.”
more
Image: pexels-pixabay-159832
Read more
Bahamas
Official Opposition Leader Michael Pintard slammed Prime Minister Philip Davis and Works and Utilities Minister Alfred Sears over the debacle of an unfinished roof collapsing on a building on the campus of the R.M. Bailey Senior High School earlier this month and characterized comments made by both an “astounding collection of mistruths.”
Mr. Pintard, on Tuesday, said, “The Opposition is dismayed by the astounding collection of mistruths and deflections the prime minister and his minister of works
have sought to drop on the Bahamian people once again in the aftermath of the roof collapse at the R. M. Bailey Construction site.” The Free National Movement (FNM) is demanding accountability.
Both Prime Minister Davis and Minister Sears, came to the defense of the contractor responsible for constructing a lunch pavilion on the school’s campus.
Last Friday, Ministry of Works officials released a statement in reference to the incident titled “R.M. Bailey High School Lunch Pavilion – Roof Collapse” however, both the prime minister and the minister with responsibility on Sunday, during a tour of schools undergoing repairs, said a roof did not collapse but instead its trusses.
In the ministry’s statement information, not intended for public consumption, was also included, and officials requested that the media not release the same, including an admission that the contractor had no written contract nor risk or liability insurance.
Prime Minister Davis confirmed the details in the statement and said the contractor had a verbal agreement that was to be reduced to writing. He also noted that the contractor, Anthony Roker of A&M Construction decided to self-insure until all of the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed.
Mr. Pintard, though, called on the prime minister to provide evidence that the Tenders Committee did its review and approval.
“First, the prime minister and Minister Sears with a straight face told the Bahamian people that the roof collapse, that everyone saw, was not in fact a collapsed roof. The PLP is now at the point where they will say anything to cover their obvious ineptitude. Fortunately, the Bahamian people know very well what they saw.
“Then, the prime minister suggested that the contractor had an oral contract for a project that would be valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at minimum. This is rubbish, plain and simple,” Mr. Pintard said.
“The Procurement Acts of 2021 and 2023 require that a project of this size be approved by the agency’s Tenders Committee or the Public Procurement Board, depending on the contract value.”
He added, “The Committee and Board would not give consideration to an ‘oral’ contract proposal, nor would they approve a waiver of the requirement for proper insurance coverage. By law, no procurement contract can be awarded unless the process prescribed by law is followed – anything else is an illegal contract.”
As for the contractor’s decision to “self-insure,” Mr. Pintard asserted that the contractor has “no option to ‘take on the risk.’”
“The issue of so-called ‘self-insurance’ held by the contractor is almost certainly a grand fiction concocted on the spot by the prime minister,” he said.
“He knows well from the BAMSI debacle that the standing government policy is that all public projects of this type require express insurance coverage.”
Back in 2015, a fire at Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Sciences Institute (BAMSI) on Andros, destroyed a dormitory. At the time, Prime Minister Davis served as the deputy prime minister and minister of works under the Christie administration.
“Unless the prime minister can provide evidence that the contractor has established a separate legal entity appropriately funded to provide insurance for the contractor’s business interests, then no self-insurance exists,” Mr. Pintard said.
The FNM Leader also questioned, “how many other illegal contracts are currently in place with nothing more than a handshake and a wink?” We demand that the prime minister provide evidence that the Tenders Committee did its review and approval. We further demand that the government provide a full accounting of all projects for which there are only “oral contracts” in place and for which there is no appropriate insurance coverage.”
While he did not provide any evidence, Mr. Pintard said it was brought to his attention that a “senior member of the engineering team did not support the construction of the truss with the size of the lumber used, neither did the technical team support the construction of the pavilion in that particular area of the campus for reasons that included the safety and security of the student population.
“If this is the case, who overrode the prudent advice of the public officers at the Ministry?” the FNM Leader said.
“We cannot have a renegade government that believes that it is above the law and can do as it pleases. If there are more examples of this wanton recklessness and illegality, then the responsible ministers must resign.
“Enough is enough.”
more
Image: pexels-pixabay
Read more
Trinidad and Tobago
FINANCE Minister ColmImbert on Thursday justified a new procurement bill by saying under the current law it could take a state body as long as four months to buy an item as simple as a drinking glass. He was in the Senate piloting the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2023 to the amend the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act 2015.
“Hyperbole and nonsense” were how he dubbed Opposition fears that the bill would gut TT’s procurement legislation.
Regarding criticism of proposals to exempt acquisitions/disposals of up to $1 million from the procurement act, he said a threshold has existed since 1961. He said under the Central Tenders Board Ordinance, in 1961 the exemption threshold for an accounting officer’s minor purchases was $10,000.
It had been increased to $100,000 in 1983, $500,000 in 1984, and now $1 million since 2010. He added. “That threshold is subject to regulation.”
He said the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had recommended exemption thresholds in areas including aid, troops and international agencies, while the Caribbean nations of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Belize have thresholds of US$150,000, virtually equivalent to the bill’s proposed $1 million.
“Exemptions are part and parcel of modern procurement laws.”
Imbert warned that reports from Jamaica were of a 25 per cent decease in the government’s development programmes under their national budget simply because public service accounting officers were “afraid, unfamiliar and unsure of what they should do” regarding procurement rules which impose hefty fines and imprisonment.
He detailed at length how a procurement procedure – inclusive of a pre-qualifying period – for an item as simple as a drinking glass could take up to four months.
Imbert said a procurement process entailed the registering of companies for pre-qualification inclusive of them ensuring their taxes (VAT and corporation tax) and National Insurance Scheme contributions were all up to date. He said the total period of up to four months did not include any additional time delay incurred by a challenge to a particular procurement exercise. “There must be a simplified procedure for routine matters.”
He said it could not be the case that one had to wait four months just to buy toner for a photocopier.
Imbert noted that Coast Guard vessels need constant upkeep and so under a restrictive procurement regime could be out of service due to acquisition problems for items as trite as a seal, ring or screw. “An entire vessel can be immobilised because it needs a ball bearing.”
He said the Coast Guard now has a credit card facility to buy such items up to a value of US$15,000.
Imbert lamented that a child in need of urgent surgery might apply to the Children’s Life Fund but this facility was subject to procurement rules. He said if the child needed to be treated at a hospital such as in South America or the US, the hospital must first pre qualify and register under the Procurement Act, which he did not think they would wish to bother to do.
“That is an example we need to look at urgently,” he said.
“Are you going to tell a hospital in Miami, ‘Produce your audited financials or we’ll not let you deal with a child with a hole in his heart?'”
Imbert then wondered at the logic of a competitive bid and a sole select bid taking the same period of time under the procurement rules.
Predicting what would happen without the bill’s passage, he said, “The procurement of routine items could become impossible and grind the country to a halt.”
more
Image: CQF-Avocat (Pexels)
Read more
Bahamas
FINANCIAL Secretary Simon Wilson could not say when the government would comply with the Public Procurement Act’s requirement to disclose contract awards but said officials are working on doing so.
The law requires government to disclose the name and address of winning bidders, the procuring entity, the procurement selection method and the award amount within 60 days of the contract award.
Mr Wilson said in April that the government would fulfil this obligation when the reporting capacity of its procurement system is improved. He said information was being backfilled on the new Bonfire procurement portal.
Asked for an update yesterday, he said: “That’s a work in progress. So, we have made great strides. We have most agencies have their contracts reported. There are one or two ones which we think are critical to be included before we publish. So, we are waiting for those agencies to upload their last contracts awards, and once that’s done, we’ll be able to publish.”
Asked about the delay in complying with the law, Mr Wilson said: “The Act came into effect July 1st. This is the 24th. So, I don’t know what’s too long.”
He said the government is committed to compliance.
“We are doing more public procurement than ever before,” he said. “If you go on our portal, you’ll see many opportunities that were never there, so we do everything that we should be doing. It’s always a work in progress. Yes, we can improve. The publication of contracts is a long-standing item that we’re working on, but we are actively working.”
Mr Wilson said he believes the public will be pleased when the publication process is completed.
We are just trying to get the first publication right because once the first publication is right, the other ones should follow,” he said.
Last week, the Bahamas Contractors Association president, Leonard Sands, criticised the government’s failure to publish contract awards and accused the administration of deliberately ignoring the requirement.
“The government and the minister of public works by choice are deciding to break the law,” he said. “The law says what should happen and they do not do what the act and the law says.”
more
Image: (Pixabay, Pexels)
Read more
Cayman Islands
(CNS): The suggestion that Cayman doesn’t have room to accommodate enough solar panels or wind turbines to generate all of its power from renewables has been debunked in the government’s new draft National Energy Policy. The revised policy, which is even more ambitious than the last one, has a target of generating 100% of our power from green resources by 2050 and 30% by 2030. While it has been established that Cayman has the capacity to adapt to a greener future, it now needs to pick up the pace.
According to the draft NEP, in order to meet the 100% renewable energy target by 2050, the Cayman Islands will have to have solar panels on rooftops, car parks and old quarries in addition to utility-sized solar farms and also review the exclusion zones to develop wind farms.
CUC is currently buying energy from just one utility solar farm in Bodden Town, which generates just 5MW of electricity. The project, built by Entropy Cayman Solar Ltd, was plagued with problems and sold in 2019. Since then, CUC has begun work on a battery installation and last year OfReg began a procurement exercise for a 23MW plant, but there has been no update on the progress of that bid.
The rest of the power generated across Grand Cayman comes from the handful of property owners who are completely off the grid and generating their own energy through domestic-scale renewables or from those on the CORE and DER feedback programmes
Both OfReg and CUC have been blamed by those in the green energy sector for stalling the development of alternative sources of energy, and they believe a radical overhaul is needed to begin the rollout of renewables in earnest.
The revised policy, which was published this week, sets out what needs to be done to help Cayman create a greener future. But it is clear that a great deal of investment will be necessary to give shape to the policy, and there are no mandatory requirements for developers. Instead, the policy depends on encouragement and the goodwill of those with the power and the purse strings. It also relies on the development of better alternative energy technologies and a drop in prices as the sector evolves.
According to the authors of the report, previous analyses had suggested possible limitations in the availability of attainable acreage for renewable energy generation development, but that has been dismissed. The policy sets out how the country can make the most of both its year-round sunshine and strong winds.
“Careful assessment of available lands, including landfills and mined-out quarries, as well as available rooftops and parking lots, has yielded a sufficiency of sites conducive to the development of utility-scale and DG opportunities,” the draft policy has found.
It also noted that government would need to revise the airport exclusion zone restrictions to accommodate wind energy facilities on Grand Cayman and outlines how Doppler and airport radar stations can coexist with utility-scale wind energy facilities.
When the report was undertaken in 2021, only 3% of power was generated from renewables here. While that number has increased slightly over the last 18 months, less than 8% of Grand Cayman’s capacity is generated by green resources. But with CUC’s continued customer growth as the population increases, the amount of diesel being burned is actually growing.
In his introduction to the draft policy, Premier Wayne Panton, who is the minister for sustainability, said that for future generations to thrive, the Cayman Islands must shift away from its reliance on expensive, volatile and polluting fossil fuels to affordable, reliable and clean renewable energy.
“In light of the recently released Climate Change Risk Assessment for the Cayman Islands, this policy update includes new policies for energy resiliency to protect against storms, electric vehicles and energy storage, all of which support greenhouse gas emission reductions,” the premier wrote. “The updated policy acknowledges that sustainable development requires a greater emphasis on social equity to promote energy access and professional opportunities for all Caymanians.”
Despite this emphasis on equity, the policy says nothing about public ownership of renewables, which Panton proposed in April last year. In his keynote address at the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum, he said his government would seek to take control of Cayman’s future green energy resources through majority ownership of any new solar or other renewable energy facilities.
Panton has continued to make his commitment to renewable energy clear. He stated again in the introduction to the NEP that Cayman cannot turn the tide against global warming but has a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of environmentally-friendly sources of energy.
“Advancing our renewable energy goals will also help protect our islands from the volatility of traditional fuels and the external shocks of international markets,” he said.
“The vision of the policy, ‘Enhancing and embracing a sustainable lifestyle through responsible,
affordable, and innovative energy supply and consumption’, speaks to our collective aspiration for a
Cayman Islands that is held up as one of the most sustainable countries in the world, a trio of islands
where all its citizens can thrive; a peaceful and prosperous place known for its resourcefulness, its
diligence, its excellence, and its innovativeness.”
more
Image: pexels-jem-sanchez
Read more
