One the eve of Carnival – Friday, August 9th – the honorable House of Representatives met to “deliberate” on a suite of bills. Among them were the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Bill, 2019 and two money bills: – a Supplementary Appropriation Bill, 2019 for an amount of $9,967,790 for the period August 1st to December 31st, 2019. ………; a Budget Loan Authorization Bill, 2019 to authorize the Minister to borrow an amount not exceeding EC$118.8 M, from various sources.
A public-private partnership project, funded by the World Bank, was approved in September 2018 between the Government and Digicel, an ICT company, under the Caribbean Regional Communication Infrastructure Program (CARCIP).
Are we the people minding our business? Are we getting information from the “powers that be”? Do we really know what is going on?
The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank – the regulatory authority of licensed banks in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union – is inviting comments on a June 2018 Consultative Paper on the Consolidation of National Banks in the Eastern Caribbean which may be accessed at the central bank’s website. The paper advises that the Monetary Council of the ECCU, which is made up of the Ministers of Finance of member countries, at its February 2018 meeting approved a statement of intent and principles of bank consolidation for the ECCU national banking sector.
And, most recently in Parliament, the Prime Minister explained that it was a 40 year loan with a 10 year grace period and repayable at less than 1 percent interest rate. He suggested that given the low rate of interest it was almost free money. He also commented that he would not have to worry about paying it back since he would definitely be out of Parliament by the time the grace period was up.
I am listening with keen interest to the utterings of two political leaders on the issue of the size of the
public debt: – the incumbent Prime Minister and Minister of the Finance, self-styled “Papa”, aka “the Great Provider of Food”; The Political Leader of the main opposition party – a former Minister of Finance in the last administration, aspirant to the office of Prime Minister and maybe Minister of Finance. I will refer to him as The Aspirant. While some may be temporarily dazzled by the chimera of brilliance of both leaders, others among us are 2018, February 18th: simply baffled.
