Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert needs to learn the de­tails of a gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment loan, Barataria/San Juan MP Dr Fuad Khan said yes­ter­day.The op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­an has ac­cused the new ad­min­stra­tion of try­ing "to stink up" the Cou­va Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal, a flag­ship project of for­mer Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

"Im­bert makes it look as though we took mon­ey and was spend­ing it wild­ly and so on and I find that to be very dis­hon­est and stu­pid," Khan said.He was re­spond­ing to com­ments made by the min­is­ter dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Sat­ur­day. Im­bert said he planned probe $239 mil­lion spent on the hos­pi­tal which was sup­posed to be a ful­ly-fund­ed project by the Ex­im Bank of Chi­na.

How­ev­er, Khan said in­ter­na­tion­al loans op­er­at­ed on a 15 per cent/85 per cent arrange­ment, where the lender pro­vides 85 per cent of the to­tal cost. He Ex­im Bank loaned the T&T gov­ern­ment 85 per cent of $1.5 bil­lion for the hos­pi­tal and "at the end of the day" the project cost about $1.9 bil­lion for con­struc­tion and equip­ment.

"When I first en­tered the min­istry, I re­searched how gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment loans run so I un­der­stand," he said. "They may know we spent $239 mil­lion but they don't know it's based on the 15 per cent."Khan said cal­cu­la­tions would show that 15 per cent of $1.5 bil­lion was around $240 mil­lion and those funds were used up front to get the project un­der­way.

"Loans from Chi­na take about a year more to come through, so while it was be­ing processed, the last ad­min­is­tra­tion used its 15 per cent to de­vel­op the in­fra­struc­ture around the area," he ex­plained.

Khan said if he had been at Sat­ur­day's ses­sion, he would have dealt with it then.