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  • 5 months ago
Member of Parliament for Diego Martin North and Former Finance Minister Colm Imbert says the government has taken 1.3 billion dollars from loans that were meant for public entities to fulfill critical obligations.
According to him, the government is broke, and he expects the situation in the country, including the unemployment level, to get worse.
Alicia Boucher has more in this report.
Transcript
00:00According to Dago Martin North MP Colman Burt, during the tenure of the People's National Movement Government,
00:07a series of loans were secured for public entities that were strapped for cash.
00:11He states that he's in possession of a Cabinet Minute dated 7 August 2025.
00:17I'm going to read this for you now.
00:20The matter for the consideration of Cabinet is the approval for transfer of funds
00:25held in accounts for 16 government-guaranteed loans executed by state enterprises.
00:33The entities include the Rural Development Company, WASA, NIPDEC, NEDCO, the Land Settlement Agency, HDC, etc.,
00:41for works such as road paving, paying contractors, and school maintenance.
00:46According to IMBIRD, when the UNC administration took office, the loans were frozen.
00:51They took all those loans, all of those loans had a purpose, $1.3 billion in total.
00:59They took all and they put it in Tanku Bank Account.
01:02That account IMBIRD is referring to is the government's bank account.
01:07According to the MP, the money is being used by the government to pay recurring expenditure
01:12for August and September, the two remaining months of the financial year.
01:16And you know what this tells me? The government is broke. The government has no money.
01:24In Bidford it states that based on liquidity levels, the government is facing constraints
01:28accessing money in the domestic market.
01:31The banks don't want to lend them no money.
01:34And you really have to wonder whether the departure, the forced departure,
01:39of the CEO of First Citizens Bank is because she didn't want to go over her limit.
01:47She didn't want to breach the central bank regulations.
01:50And they were demanding that she give them billions of dollars in money.
01:54And she couldn't do it. She'd have lost her job.
01:56IMBIRD now questions how the various public entities will carry out their obligations.
02:01He also alleges that people across various state enterprises are being forced into resignation.
02:09Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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