AFRA RAYMOND
“When it comes to law and medicine you need to hire the best experts; for all other professions you can go on price.” Recent FB post from my friend Richard Demming – he could have added accountants and bankers to that list!
The previous article dealt with the sudden unexplained shift from the supposedly-defective Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property Act to the welcome announcement of its proclamation, so long-overdue. I called for an official explanation for this sudden shift, but there has been no response thus far.
The silence of our learned friends on this issue is as echoing and eerie as it is eloquent. These colleagues have opinions on so much else. Yes, power is defined by those things you are not allowed to speak about, so self-censorship is as real as the nose on your face. Well, I tell you, eh!
This article will challenge the basis for the 2020 exemptions to the act (via Act 27 of 2020), which included government-to-government agreements (G2G are usually the hugest projects); matters of national security; legal services; debt-financing services for the national budget; accounting and auditing services; medical emergency or other scheduled medical services.
The Government decided that these transactions in public money did not require the oversight of the Office of Procurement Regulation (OPR), which the Parliament approved. I think that inimical to the public interest.
On May 9, the Prime Minister addressed the concerns over those exemptions, which of course he tried to justify. The lines have been clearly drawn on those massive G2G projects, which the government believes should not be subject to oversight by unelected officials, notwithstanding G2G’s serious and problematic history.
This article makes the case to reconsider the other exemptions, and it is notable that no actual or estimated proportions of those expenditures have been presented. Those details are difficult to unearth, which makes this a challenging issue to tackle. I am therefore proceeding on the basis of the recent reports of those expenditures and fundamental principles we continue to ignore to our collective peril.
These are massive expenditures, so these are the supporting details for my assertions, drawn from official sources.
CL Financial bailout
Many readers would be familiar with the often-reported total cost of this bailout in the $25 million range – but what was the cost of interest?
Tragically, the bailout agreements charged less than one per cent interest on the huge sums of public money advanced to settle the debts of the CLF group. My research on this disclosed that the cost to the State of the interest and financing of this bailout has been in excess of $4.83 billion. Those costs escalated from $30,640,697.82 per month between January 30, 2009 and April 30, 2016 to $85,895,308.99 per month between April 30, 2016 and June 30, 2018. Over $1 billion a year in interest: why? That was 2.8 times more in monthly interest charges in the second pe
