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Sunday, March 16, 2025

Imbert: Excess $81.6m GATE funding carried over from 2020 to 2021

by

Renuka Singh
1144 days ago
20220127
Minister of Finance Colm Imbert moves the second reading of The Finance (Variation of Appropriation) (Financial Year 2021) Bill, 2022, during the sitting of the Senate, yesterday.

Minister of Finance Colm Imbert moves the second reading of The Finance (Variation of Appropriation) (Financial Year 2021) Bill, 2022, during the sitting of the Senate, yesterday.

OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and req­ui­site school clo­sures led to an un­used Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (GATE) al­lo­ca­tion of $81.6 mil­lion in 2020.

That cred­it was added to the $400 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for 2021 which meant some $481.6 mil­lion was avail­able for GATE fund­ing.

Both Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Nigel De­Fre­itas were forced to re­mind two pre­vi­ous speak­ers about the nar­row am­bits of the Fi­nance (Vari­a­tion of Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) Bill which was de­bat­ed yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate.

Im­bert said that even though the de­tails of the de­bate were cir­cu­lat­ed to Sen­a­tors, they seemed to mis­un­der­stand that mon­ey was tak­en from sev­er­al min­istries but on­ly the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

“I just want to make the point that in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ed to ho­n­ourable sen­a­tors re­gard­ing the trans­fer of funds be­tween sub-heads has ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with the mat­ter be­fore the Sen­ate,” Im­bert said.

He al­so cor­rect­ed the record about fund­ing be­ing re­moved from the Min­istry for Agri­cul­ture to sup­ple­ment the oth­er heads. The de­bate yes­ter­day looked at the Ju­di­cia­ry, the Per­son­nel De­part­ment and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment.

“No mon­ey was tak­en from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, no mon­ey was tak­en from the Min­istry of Health, no mon­ey was tak­en from the Min­istry Agri­cul­ture or any of the Min­istries men­tioned in the doc­u­ment that gave for the in­for­ma­tion of the Sen­a­tors,” Im­bert said.

“What we are about to­day (yes­ter­day) is look­ing at the trans­fer of funds from six sub-items in sub-head 18, the Min­istry of Fi­nance on­ly,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert said that mon­ey was on­ly tak­en from the Min­istry of Fi­nance and “nowhere else.”

“The con­tri­bu­tion of Sen­a­tor Ly­der was com­plete­ly un­war­rant­ed, un­found­ed, base­less and with­out any mer­it what­so­ev­er,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert said that when he lis­tened to some con­tri­bu­tions by some Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, he won­dered if they were aware of the pan­dem­ic.

“In 2021, there were a num­ber of re­stric­tions that af­fect­ed the op­er­a­tions of ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions,” he said ex­plain­ing the in­crease in GATE.

He said that the ex­cess fund­ing could now be re-de­ployed in­to fund­ing so­cial grants and pen­sion.

“But at no time was there thou­sands of stu­dents be­ing de­nied as­sis­tance for GATE. That is just pre­pos­ter­ous. All of the re­quire­ments for GATE all of the fund­ing for GATE for fis­cal 2021 was sat­is­fied,” he said. The in­creased al­lo­ca­tion to the Ju­di­cia­ry, Im­bert said, is to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions. Im­bert said that, while all Min­istries have been di­rect­ed to live with­in their al­lo­ca­tion and man­age its ex­pens­es, the Ju­di­cia­ry, Per­son­nel De­part­ment and So­cial De­vel­op­ment need­ed more al­lo­ca­tions.


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