The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

FINANCIAL Services Minister Brent Symonette yesterday suggested more “shocks” could be on the way, referring to the reverberations of questionable moves made by the Christie administration during its time in office.

In an interview with reporters on Thursday, the St Anne’s MP urged the public to prepare itself for continued fallout as he and other members of the Minnis administration were still discovering outstanding bills and agreements left by the former government.

He also suggested that the new Free National Movement government remains hard at work in its quest to address the country’s economic woes, while working to reduce the cost of doing business across the country.

However, Mr Symonette, who made his comments on the sidelines of a Bahamas Chamber of Commerce meeting yesterday, again warned that the “unexpected” has slowed some of the plans promised by the FNM on the campaign trail.

“You know, the election was May 10, it is now what, the beginning of July; one of the issues we had to go straight into is budget. Even yesterday (Tuesday) for instance, a minister was telling me about a bill that turned up for some millions of dollars, so every day we are seeing that type of issue,” he said.

“The $400m I referred to in the Chamber’s meeting was bills that had to be paid, it was unexpected, (and) so these are issues that have to be dealt for the government.

“We do intend, Dr Minnis, the prime minister made comments about VAT on certain areas, has come out and said it will be a two-step event, some were done in this budget, (and) some will be done in a later time as the finances of the country continue to improve or we get a handle on where we are.

“There (are) still some shocks to come, and you will hear about them in the weeks and months ahead.”

Many in the country have waited with bated breath for the outcome of revelations laid out by the Minnis administration over the course of its first budget communication since being elected to office last month.

Throughout the presentation, the country was fed details of questionable deals and less than practical decisions made by the Christie administration while in office.

The information came as the new Minnis Cabinet moved to justify its decision to borrow a record $722m to meet the country’s expenses over two fiscal cycles, the 2016-2017 and the 2017-2018 fiscal periods.

One of the primary concerns of the Minnis administration is the status and validity of several of the private-public-partnerships (PPPs) the former government approved before the 2017 general election.

Attorney General Carl Bethel has revealed that his office has put six PPPs on hold, one of them including a grant of 30 acres of Crown land that was executed “days, if not on the day” before the election.

Of these specific PPPs, Mr Symonette said Thursday that the government is still working to determine what purpose they served and what value, if any, they brought to the country.

He stated directly: “I think one of the things we are looking at is to see if the existing PPPs, what they are relating to, were they properly executed, was the government getting value for money and so on and so forth.”

Later he added: “In some cases, they were executed the day before the elections in a manner that is not traditional, in the normal way governments act, Cabinet approval.

“You saw (Philip) ‘Brave’ Davis in the House of Assembly say he didn’t know, he hadn’t seen them or didn’t know about them, to that effect.

“This is a very serious problem where, traditionally, you know it is difficult to get any contract approved by government and some of these agreements have been approved without even going to Cabinet in some case.

“Those are issues that bring questions about serious governance by the former administration. So, we have to look at them and also look at how we are going to do some new ones if that is the way forward.”