GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

CEO of Am­cham T&T Ni­rad Tewarie is call­ing for a speedy res­o­lu­tion of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's im­passe with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, say­ing the pub­lic spat not good for pub­lic con­fi­dence or trust in in­sti­tu­tions.

He made the com­ments to Guardian Me­dia at AM­CHAM T&T’s sec­ond an­nu­al En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance (ESG) Con­fer­ence 2024 which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has sought le­gal coun­sel on a let­ter from Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass’ at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan SC’s Free­dom Cham­bers, which Im­bert said con­tained “out­ra­geous, false and defam­a­to­ry ac­cu­sa­tions and al­le­ga­tions.”

Im­bert said this mat­ter now re­quires a full in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

This, af­ter the im­passe where the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al de­clined to put in­to her 2023 re­port on T&T’s ac­counts, in­for­ma­tion on $2.6 bil­lion in rev­enue that Fi­nance Min­istry di­vi­sions found in Feb­ru­ary were not fac­tored in­to their state­ments for 2023.

This was due to prob­lems with a new elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem used by the Cen­tral Bank.

The $2.6 bil­lion was found af­ter Trea­sury Di­vi­sion state­ments of T&T’s ac­counts were pre­sent­ed on time—Jan­u­ary 31, 2024—to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al.

In com­ment­ing on the is­sue, Tewarie said there was not enough in­for­ma­tion to "say who is right or wrong, if there is a right or a wrong" and there­fore, judg­ment should not be passed.

How­ev­er, he called for the mat­ter to be re­solved very quick­ly and ide­al­ly, am­i­ca­bly.

"It serves no one well for two im­por­tant in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try, that is the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's De­part­ment, to go to court.

"What needs to hap­pen is that what­ev­er the dis­crep­an­cies are and what­ev­er the process to rec­on­cile be­tween a $2.6 bil­lion and $3.4 bil­lion dis­crep­an­cy that those things are rec­ti­fied. We al­so no­ticed that the au­di­tor gen­er­al flagged al­most a bil­lion dol­lars in ex­pen­di­ture that can't be ac­count­ed for. That is a cause for con­cern," Tewarie said.

He re­mained hope­ful that there would some res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter.

"We are hope­ful that it is a mat­ter of find­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate doc­u­men­ta­tion as op­posed to any mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion but we would like to see a res­o­lu­tion quick­ly and ide­al­ly, am­i­ca­bly be­cause it is not serv­ing any one in­clud­ing the par­ties in­volved well and cer­tain­ly not the gen­er­al pub­lic to have con­fi­dence in these in­sti­tu­tions un­der­mine in such a way," Tewarie added.