FINANCE SECRETARY SPEAKS OUT

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The Tobago House of Assembly continues to not be paid quarterly and in a timely manner. As a result the Division of Finance has racked up millions of dollars in overdraft interest.     Elizabeth Williams brings us up to speed on this complaint from the Finance Secretary as she spoke during a Tobago morning show on Friday.

Transcript

00:00was to receive our allocations quarterly or block in advance so it means that you

00:05must give me at the beginning of the quarter in whole every quarter right so

00:11that you have the money there so you can spend for that that's right right rather

00:14than a secretary finance I cannot tell you when I'm going to receive my next

00:19allocation not allocation next tranche of releases as a matter of fact we only

00:23received for January and February we received that last week

00:29mrs. Petaland Roberts during a morning show program in Tobago said the

00:34overdraft interest facing the THA is in the millions but I can't tell you when I

00:40would receive much that is that is what is happening in this space and then I

00:44have to activate an overdraft facility which is very costly yes 8% yeah with

00:50the bank and the overdraft interest is something that I don't cater for in the

00:55draft we don't cater for that in the job because we can't really tell how much it

00:59is and we can't make a provision for it because we expect according to the law

01:06to receive allocations in a particular way the finance secretary said suppliers

01:11have complained about delays in payments and there is reason for this so when

01:17persons are quarreling and complaining about the lack of payments it's a result

01:23of how we receive the allocations from Trinidad so that's a real pain for us

01:29I've spoken to the minister about it and the impact of that because we have

01:34overdraft interest right now an accumulation of it of about 50 million

01:39dollars TV 6 News reached out to finance minister column in bird via text for a

01:45response and up to news time was still awaiting a comment Elizabeth Williams

01:50TV 6 News

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