Govt. denies more procurement breaches occurred under Coalition -tells Auditor General to provide proof

May 29, 2019 News

-$4.45B sole sourced to New GPC in early 2015 by PPP/C

Finance Secretary, Michael Joseph

Government is taking Auditor General, Deodat Sharma, to task over supposed statements he made recently on procurement of state contracts.
Finance Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Michael Joseph, in a statement from his office yesterday, said that his attention is drawn to an online article titled, “Breach of Procurement Act more frequent under APNU+AFC Govt.” published on May 21, 2019.
According to the article, the Auditor General is reported to have said, “I believe it is more frequent now. There are a lot of sole sourced contracts and every other day you have some issue with breaches of contractual or tender board procedures. Even the recommendations for corrective action, most of them are not being implemented.”
According to the Finance Secretary, in the absence of any knowledge of a claim by Sharma, disassociating himself from the statement, it can only conclude that it was indeed made by him.

Auditor General, Deodat Sharma

“I hasten to add that this statement is most astonishing. The goodly Auditor General provides no evidence for his contention nor offers any comparative data to support his claim. What period is he comparing? Four years of the APNU+AFC government with 23 years of the former administration?”
According to Joseph, it must be made known that for the period January to May 2015, the last five months of the administration of the People’s Progressive Part/Civic, some 13 contracts were single-sourced to New GPC, a company close to that party, to the value of $4.45B.
He said that comparatively, under the government in 2015, single-sourced procurement for all agencies was $22.24B.
“In light of just this one example, can any right thinking citizen accept the Auditor General’s position? Here is another fact: The APNU + AFC Government has spent nearly $150M on 45 forensic audits which unearthed gross financial improprieties involving among others; Guyana World Cup Inc., Carifesta, NICIL/Privatization Unit, GPHC-Drug Procurement Operation, Petro Caribe, Atlantic Hotel Inc. (Marriot), all of which occurred under the very watchful eye of this same Auditor General, yet he has made no comment on these improprieties by the former Government?”
According to the Finance Secretary, it therefore appears that the AG is cherry-picking projects, programmes, entities and governments to whom he extends scrutiny.
“I wish to remind the Auditor General that the Audit Office of Guyana is the Supreme Audit Institution of Guyana; it is clothed in Article 204 of the Constitution and is designed as an independent and professional body in the government accounting chain and therefore, he is best advised to observe the spirit and letter of the code of ethics and auditing standards of the International Organization of the Supreme Audit Institutions less he be seen to be guilty of bias, subjectivity and political influence.”

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