Poor standard of governance

THE EDITOR: Finance Minister Colm Imbert has said that the negative outlook received by the country from credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s came as a result of “inaccurate estimates of gas production” from the Ministry of Energy. And in response the minister has “instructed the ministry’s staff that all communication to rating agencies and multilateral agencies must pass through the minister and the Ministry of Finance.”

There are several issues that must be of concern here. But I raise only two. The first is that this is not the first time that an international shadow of doubt has been cast upon this nation and it is not the first time that there has been an attempt to quiet the storm by placing responsibility on a third-party administrative blunder.

In March, following the diplomatic debacle involving Dominica, the Government provided a political alibi by suggesting that Foreign Affairs Minister Dennis Moses was unaware of the waiver request being considered by the OAS.

The skilful rationale provided then was that public officials in the ministry and not the minister were the ones who usurped the authority of the political directorate which led to the country falling under an undesirable and derogatory international spotlight.

Today, as Standard & Poor’s has downgraded TT’s sovereign credit rating, the Minister of Finance passes the baton of culpability unto his Cabinet colleague, who in turn seems to hurl liability on technocrats at his ministry.

The second troubling, disconcerting and disturbing area of concern, assuming the Minister of Finance is correct, is that this is not the first time that the Ministry of Energy has gotten its figures all wrong. In August 2017, a Petrotrin audit report alleged monumental volume discrepancies between oil production and actual receipts. The Petrotrin board subsequently commissioned external forensic audits by Kroll Consulting and oil and gas consultant Gaffney Cline which confirmed the internal findings. In effect, what the Ministry of Energy was parading for the last couple years to be our oil production was in fact highly inflated, overstated and exaggerated.

That matter was sent to the DPP in January and a large percentage of our population awaits with bated breath for due process to take course. Those who are not may be suffocating at the thought that such startling allegations might be swept under the red carpet.

There are a multiplicity of facts which point to maladministration, bungling and blundering here. It points to the fact that there exists no effective verification, corroboration, validation and authentication processes in individual ministries, nor within the Government as a collective whole.

That can only lend to inefficiency and governmental ineptitude at its very best. It promotes a government without accountability that runs a country through political illusion to mask executive malfunction.

If there ever existed any doubt that this Government was clueless, incompetent and virtually clumsy, then the calamitous circumstances surrounding this international credit rating concretises the poor standard of governance that we face.

ASHVANI
MAHABIR, Cunupia