Prime Minister Mia Mottley wrapped up three days of debate on the 2024 Budget proposals on Wednesday night with the revelation of a probe into the operations of the state-owned Home Ownership Providing Energy (HOPE) project.
In a two-hour defence of her government’s spending, the hiring of consultants, debt, restructuring of the economy, the operations of the Barbados Water Authority, taxation and the Barbados-Guyana Black Belly Sheep initiative, without going into details, Mottley told Parliament several things have been happening at HOPE Incorporated that have made the government unhappy.
“This is the first time the Government of Barbados is seeking to do something at this level of industrial scale,” Mottley said of HOPE, the state-owned commercial firm which is tasked with building 10 000 houses over five years.
“Has it had teething problems? Yes, it has. And have we found out things that I don’t like? Yes, we have. And have we taken action with respect to some of them? Yes, we have.
And I am not going to prejudice it this evening because I have asked for a full investigation into every aspect of it,” the prime minister said.
She also rejected suggestions by Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne that there was something untoward about $60 million paid to HOPE.
“Now, you heard about the $60 million. You would think that the $60 million gone for good.
Where did it come from? The Housing Credit Fund. It was intended always to be a revolving fund starting at $10 million. It still is…and, therefore, the monies that have been put into HOPE and in some instances National Housing, will be repaid because it is not a grant, it is a loan,” Mottley informed the House. Thorne was not present for Mottley’s speech.
The prime minister again stoutly defended the government’s decision to pay public debt management consultants White Oak $54 million to restructure the national debt, insisting that if it had not intervened, her administration would not have been able to afford the elbow room to do the things it is now doing.
But she pledged that she would do all in her power to make sure Barbados’ debt never had to be restructured again.
“May we never have to do a second restructuring…and that is why we are working so hard…both Belize and Grenada restructured once, restructured twice, and if I have sometimes to be a little unpopular, I will be, because I do not intend for the Government of Barbados to face another debt restructuring in my lifetime,” Prime Minister Mottley asserted.
The prime minister also sought to make a case for the local consultants who assisted the country in surviving its toughest economic challenges.
When Mottley addressed the Barbados Water Authority’s financial situation and the service contract concluded under the previous Democratic Labour Party administration, she told the House that “proper figures” and “proper reports” cannot be obtained from the utility company because it has to use Excel spreadsheets.
“When the overall contract came to an end in April last year, [the service firm said] they wanted US$24 000 [$48 000] a month, and, mercifully, the board up there said, ‘No, no no’.
And the reason is that when all of the contracts and works were undertaken, the price to date, we suspect, may even be more than $137 million.”
Prime Minister Mottley who responded to the opposition leader’s scepticism about the unemployment figures said that more Barbadians were working today than ever before, since Independence.
With respect to the accusation by Thorne that Barbadians were “over-taxed”, Mottley answered that Barbados enjoys one of the lowest rates in relation to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the Caribbean.
