By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Christie administration paid over $10m in consultancy fees for National Health Insurance in the last fiscal year, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance K Peter Turnquest revealed yesterday.

This includes money paid for NHI’s public relations activities that were conducted by a foreign firm, he told The Tribune.

During his budget communication, Mr Turnquest said the Christie administration also spent $30m in the last fiscal year for “roadside contracts” in New Providence under the Beaches and Parks Authority, even though the authority had been given an allocation of just $3m in the previous budget for such a purpose.

Mr Turnquest said such expenditure, never before revealed and publicly accounted for by the previous administration, explains why significant amounts of value added tax (VAT) revenue were spent to satisfy priority spending programmes and not to reduce the national debt as was originally pledged.

He also said $25m was spent over the past three years for Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival.

“I submit that those choices for the use of the large sums of VAT dollars collected did not correspond to the wishes and expectations of Bahamian citizens,” he said.

Mr Turnquest also accused the previous administration of hypocrisy, saying that despite the pledges it made when it came into office in 2012, the Christie administration entered into numerous commitments before the election which the Minnis administration now feels compelled to honour.

“In the months, weeks and days before the election, things were done that constrained our ability to carry forth our agenda,” he said.

As recent as three days ago, the new administration was still discovering unpaid commitments left in place by its predecessor, Mr Turnquest said, adding that plans to offer further tax relief for Bahamians were scratched as the realisation of the high number of unpaid commitments settled in.

“We are being surprised everyday,” he told reporters at the House of Assembly. “Up until two days ago there were things we intended to do to more tangibly demonstrate our commitment to the Bahamian people with respect to our promises on the campaign trail. We had to delay that until we stabilised our situation and could fully understand the impact that those things are going to have on our system. Things just keep coming at us. It is unusual that there isn’t one agency that can tell you what all the commitments are and we are finding that we are getting commitments from all over the place in a very decentralised kind of way and that just cannot work.

“Vendors are clamouring for payments,” he said in his communication. “It is our intention to fully pay all this backlog of payments and commitments this fiscal year and minimise, to the greatest extent possible, any carry overs into the 2017/18 fiscal year.”

Despite the fiscal headwinds, Mr Turnquest said: “I would also stress that this funding does not indicate insolvency but rather gross imprudence in the management of the fiscal affairs by our predecessors, as demonstrated by the large amount of financial commitments made in the run-up to the general election.”

With respect to NHI, the previous administration hired KPMG, among others, to provide main consultancy services.

Mr Turnquest noted that the $10m in consultancy fees was paid even though NHI has not yet been completely implemented.

NHI’s public insurer is not yet in place, as prior to the general election the previous government did not sign an agreement with the company it selected as the third party contractor responsible for managing the public insurer.