By Spokesman Newsroom
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (Thursday 3rd November 2022)-Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dr. Terrance Drew – who is also the Leader of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP)-is accusing the former Harris-led administration of poor money management which has caused the country ‘to be in the red’ when it comes to finances including certain bodies, companies, organisations associated with the government being affected thus requiring assistance from the new administration to recover.
Speaking on Freedom FM’s ‘Issues’ programme aired live on Wednesday 2nd November 2022, In addressing the topic and the economy in terms of where St. KittsNevis is as a country, PM Drew said “we inherited a deficit. For those who may not understand, it means more was going out than was coming in.
Instead of a surplus, it was the opposite of a surplus. So, it means therefore in other terms, we are in the red when it comes to our overall finances, and this report would have been delivered to me by the FS [Financial Secretary] just recently after doing an assessment.” He continued: “But that means that there are a number of critical bodies, companies, organisations associated with the government.
As gathered, such includes the St. Kitts Electricity Company Ltd., the St. Christopher Air and Sea Ports Authority (SCASPA), Solid Waste Management Corporation (SWMC) and Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis. According to PM Drew, “SCASPA has been struggling… and so we have to in a sense inject some funds there also if needed …He informed that at SWMC “there I basically no money there or very little; cannot run itself…and there the government has to come in to help…” He went on further to state: “A lot of the money that Solid Waste had, a lot of it was spent on the yellow smart bins; millions was spent on that and that really hit Solid Waste very very hard and so we see how these transaction would have taken place …money ended up in different areas but Solid Waste is also financially not sound at this time…” Also, in relation to Development Bank, the Finance Minister highlighted: “We have taken steps to stabilize the bank but the bank was in serious trouble when we got there…no money…excessive overdrafts; could not meet the daily requirements in terms of even loans that were already given out by the bank.
The bank is in a sad state. But we have taken the decision that that bank is a fundamental bank for our development we have stepped in to make sure that we stabilize that bank.” Pertaining to SKELEC, PM Drew said the company “has tremendous challenges in terms of its finances to the point where the government now from the consolidated funds have to be paying the fuel charge for SKELEC above a certain point which is equating sometimes $9 up to $11 million dollars per month.” According to the Finance Minister: “We have decided that that has increased somewhat and we have decided as a government, we’ll pay it so that this cost is not passed on to the people but SKELEC at this time as a company needs significant financial injection from the government in order to function, and that is to make sure that that high cost is not passed on to our people, especially during this COVID time and just post COVID where people would have used up a lot of their resources; many persons were out of work and so forth and so we have decided that we will take a brunt of that hit to protect the people.” He made mention that SKELEC had significant issues maybe about a month or two ago when the generators broke down.
“These are the old gen sets; some of them probably 30 something years old which means it’s time to change them out. Each one of them cost $35 million so I’m talking real money and we need about two of them just to maintain our baseline energy requirement, and we will therefore invest in it because we cannot build a country if we don’t have energy and we won’t have sufficient energy at this time.
As I said then, the government would have would have purchased two smaller sized generators.” “We have to go and rent generators of these type because when we order – LOCAL NEWS5 these gen sets, it lasts couple decades or more , and they have to be built so therefore they would be in the process of being built and it could take up to a year to be built , and during that time, we need to secure our energy base line and therefore Christmas is coming and a time when the country is going to be opened up and carnival will be in full sway, tourism will be in full sway and we have I make sure that we have the necessary energy to really propel this season that we’re expecting, and therefore we have to go into renting these generators which could cost a few hundred thousand dollars per month just to ensure we can supply the energy that is needed for our people,” Dr. Drew commented.
The Finance Minister spoke about a “significant thing” in terms of the government looking at “renewable energy to see about accessing fuel at a much cheaper cost which the government has already begun negotiations…” Front Page Photo: Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Dr. Terrance Drew while speaking on Freedom FM’s ‘Issues’ programme aired live on Wednesday 2nd November 2022 (Spokesman Screenshot via Facebook/FreedomFM106.5)
