Cabinet gets Green Paper on safeguarding oil revenues

Winston Jordan

Even as Attorney General Basil Williams and team continue to “fine tune” draft legislation for a Natural Resources Fund (NRF), a Green Paper will soon be presented to the National Assembly, with fiscal responsibility and debt sustainability key among its contents.

The Green Paper was presented to the APNU+AFC Cabinet last Tuesday and is expected to be discussed when it meets again this week, before being tabled in the National Assembly ahead of next month’s parliamentary recess, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan told Sunday Stabroek.

“The Green Paper was presented to Cabinet last week Tuesday and discussed. The Commonwealth Advisor, Dr Daniel Wilde, he was there to make a presentation along with the Ministry of Finance internal staff and myself. It was well received by Cabinet. It has been deferred to this Tuesday until some additional members, some key members who were not present at that meeting, would be there to provide their input. Hopefully, by then, it would be finalised and once Cabinet says it is a go, we will get it printed and presented to the National Assembly before it goes into recess, the 10th of August[2018],” Jordan explained.