The
Trinidad Guardian
KINGSTON
Petroleumworld.com
03 19 06
Secretary
Colin Bullock is to chair a board set up by government to handle
public funds saved through the PetroCaribe oil accord with Venezuela,
Finance Minister Omar Davies announced Wednesday.
Davies,
who was speaking in Parliament as he closed the debate on the
first supplementary estimates for 2005/2006, was responding
to claims by the Opposition that money saved from the oil agreement
was already being spent in areas like road clearance and repairs.
“The
PetroCaribe funds are not a giant cookie jar to be used as a
pre-election system by the government to win a fifth term,”
Audley Shaw, the Opposition spokesman on finance said earlier
in the debate in the supplementary estimates.
Shaw said
the money must go to the Consolidated Fund or a special law
must be passed to accommodate it.
But the
finance minister told parliamentarians that in order to formalise
the process, the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica Act would
be amended to allow for the establishment of a fund into which
the proceeds would flow.
“I
have already taken the submission to Cabinet, drafting orders
have already been given to the chief parliamentary counsel and,
hopefully, before the end of the financial year, I will be tabling
a ministry paper in terms of how the funds will be formally
used,” Davies said.
He said
that once the bill was passed, the fund would be established
and the board could begin to function.
He said
that the Venezuelan government had already given certain guidelines,
although they had not restricted the use of the funds.
“These
funds cannot be used for example for repayment of external debt,
but they can be used for developmental purposes, or for retiring
high priced domestic debts,” the minister said.
He said
that once the board was in place it would begin to accept submissions
in terms of the use of the funds.
