A Suggestion on BOLT’s

Minister of Tranport, Works and International Transport John Boyce made a comment in the house yesterday about the Government’s potential use of Build Operate Lease Transfer (BOLT) arrangements in the future.

ANY FUTURE BOLT – Build Operate Lease and Transfer – arrangements that Government signs will be designed to bring economic benefits
to the country.

Minister of Transport, Works and International Transport John Boyce told the House of Assembly yesterday during debate on the 2008-2009 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure that BOLT arrangements were supposed to generate savings and not additional costs.

The previous administration made use of several of this type of arrangement. However the nature of the implementations often left questions on the transparency of the deals. This was noted in an IMF  report on Barbados.

The report makes a number of reccomendations with regard to this Public-Private Sector arrangement.

• Consideration should be given to developing a legal framework that covers roles and responsibilities of PPPs, a clear definition of PPPs and their scope, as well as rules related to procurement, accounting, reporting, and audit of PPPs.

• All forms of guarantees related to PPPs should be disclosed, and an assessment made of their likely fiscal cost. PPP contracts including renegotiations should be publicly disclosed. Standardization and simplification of contracts would be desirable.

• Future payments required under existing PPP contracts should be reported and included in medium-term planning.

• The transfer to accrual accounting should ensure the proper accounting of PPPs and related debt.
  

We on the margin would be much more reassured by the implementation of a legal framework to govern the use of BOLT’s and similar arrangements than simply Mr. Boyce’s statement of “Trust us”.

Marginal