The Tribune

By Morgan Adderley

Tribune Staff Reporter

madderley@tribunemedia.net

THE forensic audit into the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute is still ongoing, Minister of Agriculture and Marine Resources Renward Wells said yesterday, however it is expected the report will be made public before the House of Assembly's full-year budget debate later this year.

When asked by reporters if there were any updates on the audit, the Bamboo Town MP reiterated that it is still in progress.

He also said he does not want to speak to the details of the audit before he receives the full picture.

Mr Wells added: "When we get (the audit), we're an open and transparent administration, and I will put it forward to the Bahamian people."

He continued: "You all would have seen from the contribution of Michael Foulkes, the executive chairman of (the Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation) BAIC, how we just put it all out there on the table as to how much in arrears we are, the fact that no audits were done since 2012 in the corporation.

"Whatever the results are in BAMSI, we will be putting those forward as well."

Mr Wells was also asked on Tuesday when BAMSI's buildings are set to open.

While he mentioned that at the end of 2017 many of these buildings were "very close to completion", Mr Wells declined to give a specific date.

"When we do open, obviously we're going signal to the public that we are.

"We intend to do some more works down there in BAMSI on the school side, we also intend to expand the farm," he said yesterday.

Mr Wells said that BAMSI has about 1,000 acres of property, with only about 100 acres under cultivation.

He added that the intent is to expand this to 500 acres over the next year, with the goal being operating at full capacity.

"We're going to use the complete 1,000 acres of BAMSI to start production so that we can begin to produce more than just 8 per cent of we eat in this country."

When asked when this report will be tabled, Mr Wells said he is planning to do it before the budget debate in Parliament.

Calls for audits into BAMSI go back as far as 2014.

In September of that year, then opposition leader Dr Hubert Minnis demanded a fiscal audit of the institute after it was revealed that the Christie administration had spent nearly $50m on the project.

Approximately $20m was initially budgeted for the project.

Dr Minnis questioned whether the surplus from the government's previous estimation on costs had been "pocketed".

He asked at the time: "Where is the other $30-odd million, was it placed in someone's pocket, and if so, whose?

"The Bahamian people want a breakdown of the money supposedly spent that the Ministry of Agriculture is talking about.

"We need to know where that money was spent and we need to account for that."

In May 2017, following the general election, the Minnis administration announced that a forensic audit would be conducted on BAMSI, among other government entities.