Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
May 13, 2014 News
Presidential advisor on governance, Gail Teixeira, has said that the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) is meeting during the last week of May. “It is expected that Guyana would have a Bill assented to in time, otherwise we as far as I know are automatically referred to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG) as a country that’s not in compliance.”
FATF will be meeting in June to decide whether Guyana will be internationally blacklisted. “I am advised that it is automatic, that if we miss this last deadline we will be referred to FATF and the ICRG,” which she said is meeting two weeks after CFATF’s deadline.
Teixeira said that the business community which has been complaining has all right to be worried. The ordinary Guyanese also have to worry. She said, “We can’t seem to get the opposition members to budge on the compromise of the government which is to proceed with the amendment brought by the government the second time around in December and approved on February 9. Let’s go with that and lets continue to look at their (CFATF) amendment and in the meantime ask CFATF to look at the amendment brought by APNU which we have done.”
Teixeira said that Chairperson of CFATF, Allison Maynard Gibson had offered the government and opposition that they were willing to offer technical assistance to review the bill and “to advise us whether it would be were they to be brought to the house and were they to passed in the house compliant or not.
“So we made that request to CFATF to look at the APNU amendments… we approached CFATF last week to look at our amendments of February 9 and the amendments of APNU which were discussed at the end of April to advise us if these amendments are compliant or not with CFATF,” said Teixeira.
According to the Presidential advisor, who is also Chairperson of the Parliamentary Select Committee, she spoke to A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Carl Greenidge. “When I appealed to him last week that we needed to have a meeting, that we have a deadline and could we please meet, he sent a letter saying that they were unable to meet this week coming but that they could have met last week and maybe the following week.
“I spoke to him personally and he said to me ‘Gail why are you getting your pressure up? We are not going to meet the deadline.”
Teixeira stressed that the combined opposition’s position was always that they want everything. “They want their bills assented to, and they want the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) appointed. We said, ‘These issues cannot be resolved in time because the Public Accounts Committee is still dealing with the PPC issue.”
According to Teixeira, the subcommittee of the PPC met yesterday “going through the criteria of the selection process; we have not finished that part and so the PAC is not in the position yet to deal with this matter.”
She added that the issue of the Alliance For Change (AFC) which had a press conference when it “gave a nine-page point of how the Bill will be passed and it has to have the PPC appointed, and must have heads of the Procurement Act according to their amendment.
“We had to assent to the non assented bill and there is no way that could be done in time.”
“So our compromise is that ‘Let us go ahead with the amended Bill with their agreements; let’s get that and make the deadline with CFATF and we will continue to look at these amendments that APNU is bringing to the principal Act and get CFATF to say which are compliant and which are not. If CFATF said they are compliant we will get them in a separate Bill” said Teixeira.
These actions, she confirmed, would delay international sanctions from CFATF and FATF were they implemented.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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