Minister Of Finance Camilo Gonsalves Gives Full Disclosure On CDB Saga
I’m going to confine myself to statements of fact about this. This incident, we had a discussion with the president of the Caribbean Development Bank and it’s been alluded to both in their statement and by the prime minister.
Present for the CDB was the president of the CDB and head of his procurement arm and someone who was intimately involved with the Miss procurement.
And on our side, I was joined by Minister Montgomery Daniel, who was the prime minister acting at the time, and Minister Julian Frances. Minister works through whose ministry the procurement was done and various public servants, including Edmond Jackson, the head of attendance board.
The loan agreement that was signed between the Caribbean Development Bank and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in November of 2014. The loan agreement covers. a number of projects related to climate resilience, but also covers the Yarabua River project, this loan agreement is called Natural Disaster Management, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction December 2013 Trough event.
On page eight of that agreement, the CDB lists in article five conditions precedent to the first procurement.
One of them is called condition precedent to disbursement with respect to immediate mitigation works. In section five the CBB mandates us that the borrower furnish evidence acceptable to the bank that an engineering consultant responsible for design review and construction supervision be engaged.
“So they say before you start, before we give you any money, you need to have this consultant in place and the duties of this consultant are listed in your schedule several”.
“One of the things that they list is to assist the Ministry of Transport and works in the evaluation of tenders, including the preparation of tender reports”.
So we signed a contract with the CDB. The CDB said you have to hire a consultant. Before you get any money from us, and that consultant has to prepare the tender evaluation reports that is in the contract that we signed with the CDB. So that’s the first thing.
We hired an entity called IBI, a Canadian firm.
It is one of the largest engineering and architectural consultants in the world. It has over twenty-four hundred employees. It is in the top 10 globally in terms of size as an entity.
Listen Gonslaves Give Full Disclosure
