Minister says Govt still clearing former DLP administration’s arrears

Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn has lashed out at critics of Government’s debt settlement plan, singling out the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) for being “irresponsible” in building the arrears the Mia Mottley administration was now on a quest to clear.

Introducing the Procurement Bill 2021 to lawmakers in Parliament on Tuesday, Straughn said Government was seeking to make a lot of things right even as it battled with the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic and several other challenges throughout the year.

Straughn disclosed that the former Freundel Stuart-led DLP administration was guilty of not settling its arrears with several vendors including providers of diesel to the Transport Board, Sanitation Service Authority (SSA) and the Barbados Fire Service.

Additionally, the government minister disclosed that the former DLP administration had fallen short on paying National Insurance Scheme (NIS) contributions for civil servants, which now made up some of the roughly $1.9 billion in arrears that government was seeking to settle by September next year.

“It is interesting that with all the talk out there about government paying by ‘IOU’ . . . we are still paying for diesel for the few Transport Board buses they had running when they were in office as well as for the diesel for the few sanitation trucks they had running. We are still paying for that,” said Straughn.

He said when the Mia Mottley administration came to office in 2018 he would receive calls from officials of Sol and Rubis “almost every day”, with them wanting to know “when they would get paid” for fuel that was used by the various government entities.

“The reality is that the last government was just simply irresponsible,” said Straughn, pointing out that government had to find “$1 million every month to pay for diesel” as it settled those arrears.

Government has come in for harsh criticism for introducing the Debt Payment (Arrears) Bill, which makes provision for the creation and issuance of Series J Bonds to settle some of its arrears.

The bill, which hit a stumbling block in the Senate last Thursday, was sent back with minor amendments.

On Tuesday Straughn moved a resolution to seek the Lower House’s agreement on the amendments made by the Senate to both the Debt Settlement (Arrears) Bill 2021 and the Customs Bill 2021. He noted that the former bill was contemplated as part of the wider debt restructuring.

However, he made it clear that the plan was not to pay pensions or gratuity through government bonds.

“For the record, the personal and/or pensionable emoluments of public servants were never contemplated to be part of any settlement with respect to the payment of bonds,” said Straughn, adding that the amendments made in the Senate were to provide that clarity.

“Therefore I, on behalf of the government, concur with the amendments made in the Senate in relation to the Debt Settlement (Arrears) Bill as well as the amendments with respect to the Customs Bill 2021,” said Straughn, ahead of the resolution being voted on and passed.

In a swipe at the last DLP administration, however, Straughn said “Despite losing $600 million in revenue we did not ask anybody to pay tuition fees at the university. We did not ask anybody to pay for secondary or primary education.

“When people say we are borrowing and we are doing this and the next and the third, the reality is that they were not paying people. The reality is that any time you don’t pay people nobody is going to lend you money. That is their track record, not ours,” he said.

Urging Barbadians to think critically, Straughn said he was satisfied that Government was making “good progress” in settling its arrears, explaining that except for “maybe one or two instances”, Government had been paying invoices in 30 days even though under the BERT programme 60 days is the limit and keeping current on its other payments.

“That is what fiscal discipline looks like. That is what government is supposed to do,” he said to applause.

“We paying the bills they left us to pay and we continue to pay it in the middle of a pandemic while having to increase expenditure to deal with the pandemic and try to give some measure of social protection to over 3,000 families,” he added.

Straughn suggested that had government not had the $1.9 billion in arrears to settle, it would have been able to do more for vulnerable households.

“I want people to cast their minds back to the state of the country when we found it in 2018 and with all of that sewage was flowing on the streets for three years and they had no intention of fixing it,” said Straughn.

“We got a set of people who seem to be showing their heads again. They should be shame. The way they treated this country none of us deserved that,” he said.

Straughn also recalled that the Mia Mottley administration had to renegotiate a lot of contracts made under the last DLP administration, changing some “sordid details”.

“It tells you something was fundamentally wrong with the way procurement was being done in this country under the last administration. I saw that in contract after contract after contract. So I am waiting now to hear what they say about this Procurement Bill,” he said. (MM)