Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

bavi­ta.gopaulchan

@guardian.co.tt

To­day, the Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee (PAC) will meet at 10 am to re­view the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on the 2023 pub­lic ac­counts and a sub­se­quent spe­cial re­port.

The re­port for the fi­nan­cial year 2023 trig­gered ten­sion be­tween the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice in April af­ter the min­istry re­vised the pub­lic ac­counts to cor­rect an un­der­state­ment of gov­ern­ment rev­enue, ini­tial­ly re­port­ed as $3.4 bil­lion and lat­er ad­just­ed to $2.6 bil­lion.

Ram­dass had com­plet­ed an au­dit of the orig­i­nal ac­counts but was sub­se­quent­ly asked to au­dit the amend­ed fig­ures that re­port­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rev­enue. She ini­tial­ly re­sist­ed, ar­gu­ing that the statu­to­ry dead­line to pro­vide ac­counts was on Jan­u­ary 31. How­ev­er, she even­tu­al­ly con­duct­ed a sec­ond au­dit af­ter le­gal pres­sure from the min­istry.

Fol­low­ing her sec­ond au­dit, Ram­dass re­port­ed dif­fi­cul­ties in rec­on­cil­ing the new rev­enue fig­ures with the min­istry’s da­ta, which she doc­u­ment­ed in her fi­nal au­dit re­port sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment.

In May, the Fi­nance Min­istry an­nounced an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, led by re­tired judge David Har­ris, to ex­am­ine the dis­crep­an­cies and Ram­dass’s au­dit con­clu­sions.

Ram­dass sought ju­di­cial re­view, ar­gu­ing that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­pro­mised her of­fice’s in­de­pen­dence un­der sec­tion 116(6) of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which pro­tects the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al from ex­ter­nal con­trol.

While the High Court ini­tial­ly dis­missed her ap­pli­ca­tion, the Ap­peal Court lat­er re­versed this de­ci­sion, grant­i­ng her the right to chal­lenge the probe’s le­git­i­ma­cy.

Last week, the Privy Coun­cil dis­missed Im­bert’s ap­peal, paving the way for Ram­dass to pur­sue a law­suit over the cab­i­net-ap­point­ed probe.

The PAC’s meet­ing to­day is ex­pect­ed to shed fur­ther light on the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s find­ings for 2023.

In ad­di­tion, the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee will con­vene at 2.30 pm to ad­dress spe­cif­ic ex­pen­di­tures with­in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.