FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert has announced an audit into the expenditure in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) during the nine-year tenure in office of the Prime Minister, and the five-year tenure of his immediate predecessor Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

He also promised that the detailed audit will be laid in Parliament in three months.

Imbert made this promise on October 14 before the Standing Finance Committee of the House of Representatives approved a $7,359,935,650 budgetary allocation to his ministry.

After he outlined some of the duties of departments which fell under his ministry, Imbert said, "I have today instructed the central audit division to audit the expenditure at the OPM in terms of entertainment and other expenses such as maintenance of the Diplomatic Centre and so on for the period 2010-2015 (Persad-Bissessar) and the period 2015-2024 (Dr Rowley)."

He added this report will be "laid in the Parliament so that we can see exactly what was spent during the 2010-2015 period and what has been spent by the prime minister during the 2015-2024 period.

"I undertake that within three months, I will lay that report so everybody could see – the public and everybody else."

When he concluded the budget debate in the House on October 10, Imbert said Persad-Bissessar was wrong to claim there was a $50 million allocation to the OPM in the 2024/2025 budget for the hosting of fetes.

Efforts to reach Persad-Bissessar for a response to Imbert's announcement were futile as calls to her cellphone were not answered and there was no response to WhatsApp messages sent to her.

It was Persad-Bissessar who on October 7, at a press conference, raised questions regarding a $400 million allocation to the OPM for construction. She called on Dr Rowley to explain what she said could be perceived as "double dipping" into public funds by the allocation of this $400 million.

At a PNM meeting on October 3, Rowley said the allocation was for debts owed to the Urban Development Corporation (Udecott) for several projects including the central block at Port of Spain General Hospital, which is under construction.

However, Persad-Bissessar noted that funding for Udecott projects, including the hospital's central block, had already been allocated through other ministries in the 2025 Draft Estimates of Development Programme.

Following Persad-Bissessar's calls, both the Prime Minister and Imbert, in their budget contribution and wind-up respectively, sought to highlight expenditure levels at the OPM when she was prime minister as compared to expenditure levels under Rowley.

Imbert said the expenditure at the OPM when Persad-Bissessar assumed office in 2010 was $14 million. By 2012, this figure had increased to $35 million. In 2014, it was $44 million.

Expenditure at the OPM under Dr Rowley, he said, averages $10 million annually.

"The expenditure of their (UNC) prime minister was three times that, close to $40 million. I won't go into details about $3,000 on roti and $1 million on shrimp."

Imbert said Persad-Bisse