The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Perry Christie yesterday clarified that the government did not fund the completion of the Baha Mar convention centre.

Mr Christie told reporters that the costs to finish the centre ahead of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Annual General Meetings were assumed by the EXIM Bank of China.

“The government didn’t do that, that was done by the bank,” he said on the sidelines of a press conference at The College of The Bahamas.

However, this conflicts with statements made by the government’s project co-ordinator for the IDB meetings, Janeen McCartney, who told reporters last week that the government had assumed the cost to finish the convention centre at the stalled Cable Beach resort.

Mrs McCartney said the government had budgeted around $6m to prepare and host the event. She pointed out that the government had to bring in several experts to review the centre because it had been closed for months.

“We would have paid to have the items that were not ready. We would have assumed that cost,” Ms McCartney told the media following a tour of the convention centre last week.

Mr Christie’s clarification on the matter came as Long Island MP Loretta Butler-Turner issued a scathing rebuke of the government’s “extravagant” hosting of the IDB meetings. She called on the Christie-led administration to reveal the exact figures spent on the event’s preparation and hosting.

“The extravagance of hosting the Inter-American Development Bank Group’s Board of Governors Annual General Meeting is an expense the Bahamas cannot afford given budgetary constraints, including the need for significant funds for the rebuilding of communities devastated by Hurricane Joaquin,” she said in a statement.

“The tableaux of the government hosting the conference at the megaresort that failed to open because of PLP incompetence is not lost on the Bahamian public.”

Mrs Butler-Turner added: “The hosting of the meeting is another example of the prime minister’s and his government’s use of public funds to inflate their egos while scores of Bahamians are unemployed, many are having a difficult time making ends meet, and the country may still be at risk of another downgrade.”

She suggested the government had used public funds to improve a facility slated to be the venue for the next Progressive Liberal Party convention.

Mrs Butler-Turner also questioned whether the funds spent on the conference will exceed the reported budget estimations, and whether there was a legal basis for using public funds to improve privately owned facilities in receivership. She also asked for the names of the private groups and individuals given contracts in connection with hosting the event, and whether the public treasury would be reimbursed for expenses.