Nedco’s year end party

How could State-owned National Entrepreneurship Development Company (Nedco) hold a Christmas party in 2016 while it recorded millions of dollars in losses in its loan portfolio since inception?

This was the question Public Accounts (Enterprise) Committee member David Small put to the Nedco board and managers on Wednesday at a hearing into the operations of the company. Nedco has reported a 77 per cent non-performing loan ratio since it was founded in 2002. When Small asked the question, he got no answer.

“Go to Nedco’s website and open it. You see everybody having a good time at a Port of Spain hotel in a situation where the entity is generating no revenue and is haemorrhaging money,” Small pointed out. The company and its leadership, he said, are custodians or trustees of Government’s funds and there is need for value for money. “It is not what you do, but how you do it,” he said.

He asked acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour Natalie Willis if her ministry held an end-of-year party.

She said she did not know, as she only recently took up her current post. She was told by a staffer that none was held. Small asked Willis if she would be surprised to hear that Nedco had had an end-of-year staff function at a Port of Spain hotel.

“Yes, I would be,” Willis said. While it was good to honour staff, Small said, one would have to understand the economic circumstances. “Somewhere inside there, people have to look and say, ‘perhaps, if we are spending tax payers’ dollars and we want to try to give something to the staff, we could do it in a different way’.” Pictures of the staff party were posted on Nedco’s website. “I found it (the photos) interesting,” Small said.

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