New spending guidelines for Nevis civil servants

Departments heads in the Nevis Island Administration have been asked to provide greater accountability of how public money is spent.

In a meeting with new Premier Mark Brantley, senior civil servants were told of new guidelines to curb excessive spending.

“We are trying to restrain excesses and particularly on the Capital side of the budget, it is important that we have the necessary controls in place,” said Brantley, who is also the island’s finance minister.

“So we have said and will continue to say, that capital projects in excess of $200,000 must come to the cabinet for approval.

“We no longer want the heads or permanent secretaries to simply say go ahead awarding contracts. If it comes to $200,000 and over we want it to come to cabinet.

“We want to see the details so that we can have an understanding and make a decision in relation to that.”

Brantley noted that the new move stems from strong complaints by the Ministry of Finance and its insistence that costing and the source of funding has to be worked out in advance of giving permission to contractors to commence projects.

“We need to ensure that we do things properly so as to have greater accountability in terms of our fiscal management of the public purse,” the premier added.

He added that budget discussions would commence early this week as a result of reconfigurations to some ministries as such budgetary proposals would have to be done for the administration’s next fiscal year.