GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO and

AN­DREA PEREZ-SOBERS

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young pressed the Gov­ern­ment for an­swers on fu­el sub­sidy pay­ments, staffing arrange­ments and li­a­bil­i­ties linked to Petrotrin as the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries’ al­lo­ca­tion came un­der ex­am­i­na­tion in Par­lia­ment.

Dur­ing the stand­ing fi­nance com­mit­tee in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal dis­closed that the Gov­ern­ment paid a to­tal of $750 mil­lion in fu­el sub­sidy re­im­burse­ments dur­ing fis­cal 2026, com­pris­ing $544 mil­lion to NP and $206 mil­lion to Unipet.

The is­sue arose as Young ques­tioned al­lo­ca­tions un­der the min­istry’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and sought de­tails on spend­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with the na­tion­al fu­el sub­sidy pro­gramme. He not­ed that the orig­i­nal 2026 al­lo­ca­tion of $300 mil­lion had been re­vised up­wards to $750 mil­lion and asked how much of that amount had ac­tu­al­ly been paid.

Mooni­lal replied that the Gov­ern­ment had made two pay­ments dur­ing the fis­cal year and con­firmed that the full re­vised al­lo­ca­tion had been uti­lized.

The ex­change then turned con­tentious when Mooni­lal raised what he de­scribed as in­her­it­ed sub­sidy oblig­a­tions from the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The min­is­ter said out­stand­ing sub­sidy pay­ments left pri­or to the change of gov­ern­ment amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $971 mil­lion, prompt­ing Young to ques­tion why the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion had bud­get­ed on­ly $300 mil­lion in its first es­ti­mates de­spite be­ing aware of those li­a­bil­i­ties.

Young re­peat­ed­ly sought in­for­ma­tion on the cur­rent amounts owed to NP and Unipet. How­ev­er, Mooni­lal said he would pro­vide an ac­cu­rate fig­ure at a lat­er date rather than give a num­ber dur­ing the sit­ting.

Young ar­gued that Par­lia­ment and the pub­lic should be in­formed of the out­stand­ing bal­ances, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the al­lo­ca­tion for fu­el sub­sidy re­im­burse­ments is pro­ject­ed to fall from $750 mil­lion to $700 mil­lion in the next fis­cal year.

He al­so ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment was ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry­ing for­ward debt as­so­ci­at­ed with the sub­sidy pro­gramme, cit­ing ris­ing glob­al fu­el costs and diesel sup­ply pres­sures.

Mooni­lal re­spond­ed that, as Young would know from his pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence as min­is­ter, some li­a­bil­i­ties are rou­tine­ly car­ried from one fis­cal year in­to an­oth­er.

The de­bate al­so fo­cused on em­ploy­ment arrange­ments with­in the min­istry.

Young point­ed to a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in spend­ing on short-term em­ploy­ment, which is pro­ject­ed to rise by more than $10 mil­lion, and ques­tioned why the min­istry was re­ly­ing more heav­i­ly on short-term work­ers while car­ry­ing 88 va­cant con­tract po­si­tions.

Mooni­lal said the in­crease was linked to ef­forts to cor­rect long-stand­ing con­cerns raised by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­gard­ing in­di­vid­u­als be­ing en­gaged for years as ser­vice providers while car­ry­ing out func­tions sim­i­lar to reg­u­lar em­ploy­ees.

The min­is­ter out­lined that those work­ers are now be­ing placed un­der more ap­pro­pri­ate short-term arrange­ments while the min­istry works to fill per­ma­nent and con­tract po­si­tions.
He con­firmed that 88 con­tract posts re­main va­cant and that the min­istry in­tends to ad­ver­tise and fill those po­si­tions.

Young al­so sought de­tails on spend­ing un­der “oth­er con­tract­ed ser­vices”, which car­ries a sub­stan­tial al­lo­ca­tion. Mooni­lal ini­tial­ly un­der­took to pro­vide a writ­ten break­down but lat­er ex­plained that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of pro­ject­ed spend­ing re­lates to pay­ments made on be­half of Petrotrin con­nect­ed to lega­cy oblig­a­tions, as well as en­vi­ron­men­tal cleanup ac­tiv­i­ties.