Stop piggybacking on eTecK

IT is time for InvesTT to stop piggybacking on eTecK and establish its own internal auditing. So said member of the Public Accounts (Enterprises) Committee Wade Mark when the committee sat on Wednesday to hear an overview of InvesTT's audited accounts for the period 2014-2017.

InvesTT's president Christopher Lewis said the organisation’s mandate was to attract, facilitate and source foreign investments from across the globe, and it began with the organisation's website.

"We have targeted attendance at foreign events where we are able to not only meet investors, but we are able to observe better practices in different markets. The website is very important because as the port of first call, investors check to see what Trinidad has to offer."

Mark heard that for the said period, InvesTT has brought in about $863 million in investments to TT, however, he did not seem too impressed.

"InvesTT is an investment/promotion agency and one would hope that for it to do its work properly, efficiently and effectively, you will need to have some real stability, autonomy. You will need to have well-resourced organisations with technical competencies, but when I looked at the submissions by InvesTT and the Trade Ministry, I had issues. One of the issues was the inescapable conclusion that InvesTT has become literally a ward of Trinidad before it became part of one nation. One gets the impression that InvesTT has grown into a ward of eTecK. It seems as if InvesTT depends on eTecK for a number of activities including programming it with resources to finance."

Mark said it was time for InvesTT to establish its own independent internal audit.

"This tendency that we are seeing emerging, of piggybacking on other entities, they are organisations that are independently incorporated under the Companies Act, and once you are incorporated under the Companies Act of this country, you will realise you have a duty and responsibility to harness this company, within your organisation, an independent unit, be it one person or two persons, but you cannot continue to piggyback on eTecK for internal audits. I will ask the PS, along with Ministry of Finance to ensure there is an independent audit unit within the operations of InvesTT."

However, InvesTT chairman Philip Knaggs said this was not really the case. He said eTecK provided outsource functions that were non-essential for the core business of the company.

He said while InvesTT was trying to source investors to sustain and facilitate investments in TT, eTecK was providing some support services such as finance function, human resource and information technology services, background services for the organisation.

"InvesTT, on a daily basis, is very focused on getting foreign investment into Trinidad, and eTecK has no involvement in that area."

Mark also noted that close to 90 per cent of InvesTT's allocation was used for recurrent expenditure for staff cost and related expenses.

Chairman Dr Tim Gopeesingh asked about the 14 positions that were vacant within InvesTT, which had a staff of 18. Lewis said filling the vacancies were "a little ambitious" of what InvesTT needed as an institution for going forward, as a lot of those positions were being filled by eTecK.

"You may need to revise your organisational structure and ask eTecK to let InvesTT fill the positions so that you can do your own work."

Lewis responded: "It is a matter of funding because we can fill these positions, but when month-end comes and they come for payment, we may have a problem."