The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Minnis administration added some meat to the bones of its transparency and accountability agenda yesterday, with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance K Peter Turnquest revealing the government’s plans for anti-corruption initiatives, handling of constituency allowances and regulation of public procurement processes, among other things.

During his budget communication, Mr Turnquest said the government will implement “rules and procedures” to govern how constituency allowances are used. Attorney General Carl Bethel told this newspaper that the process has lacked discipline in recent years and that questionable activity has taken place through it, prompting a need for more rigorous oversight.

Mr Turnquest added that fiscal responsibility legislation, opposed by the previous administration, will be introduced by the current administration.

“That would make it difficult for future administrations to incur deficits unabated,” he said. “This law would also prevent ministries and departments from introducing new spending initiatives in-year without identifying the requisite financing from within their budget allocations.”

Mr Turnquest said the government will introduce Public Procurement Regulations “to support the amendments to the Financial Administration and Audit Act”.

The 2013 amendment to the Financial Administration and Audit Act established the Public Procurement Department, formerly the Tenders Board. Although that amendment gives the minister of finance the power to create regulations regulating the procurement department, such regulations, if they exist, have never been disclosed.

Asked about the matter yesterday, Mr Turnquest said “some rules exist,” but more must be done to harmonise procurement processes across the public sector.

“These amendments will make it mandatory for the government to use transparent bidding procedures when it acquires goods or services from the private sector,” he said in his budget communication. “It will also mandate a certain percentage of government procurement being available for small and medium sized businesses.”

For years, the country’s procurement processes have been criticised by stakeholders as opaque and non-transparent.

Mr Turnquest also revealed the government’s intention to establish an Anti-Corruption Agency.

He said the government will comprehensively review expenditure programmes to “determine where and how value for money can be enhanced, how effectiveness and efficiency of service can be improved and where savings and reallocations can be secured to both finance the government’s policy priorities and facilitate a more expeditions reduction and elimination of the GFS deficit.”

He said the government intends to table in Parliament a full list of financial subsidies provided to developers “so the Bahamian public can see not only where the VAT money has gone but where all of the tax money has gone.”

He said Bahamians will be stunned to learn how many subsidies have been offered to foreign investors.

“We will seek to reduce these subsidies to an irreducible minimum and apply a very rigid test on future requests for financial subsides to ensure that more money is available to finance the operations of the government,” he said.