By Kurt Campbell
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The National Assembly on Monday, April 14 approved funding for five Administrative Regions for the fiscal year 2014 as allocated in the National 2014 Budget.
The Regions are: Region Six, Berbice Corentyne; Region Seven, Cuyuni Mazaruni; Region Eight, Potaro Siparuni; Region Nine, Upper Takatu Upper Essequibo and Region Ten, Upper Demerara Upper Berbice.
Region Six received the largest regional funding to the tune of $4B under current expenditure and $425M under capital expenditure and will collectively deal with services relating to regional administration and finance, agriculture, public works, education delivery and health.
Region Seven was allotted $1.4B under current expenditure and another $150M under capital and will go towards similar services as Region Six. Region Eight received a total of $118M under current expenditure and $165M under capital.
Region Nine received funding totaling $1.1B under current and $307M under capital.
Meanwhile, Region Ten’s current expenditure amounted to $1.9B while its capital expenditure totaled $276M.
The monies allotted to these five Regions totaled over $9.4B under current and $1.3B under capital.
These five Regions took Members of the House several hours to consider line by line.
Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker along with his team from the Ministry was grilled by the Opposition to provide information and clarity where they found it was missing.
Whittaker wasted no time to provide answers and committed to providing answers at a later time where it wasn’t readily available.
The Allocations for Regions One to Five was considered on Friday last and approved unanimously by the House.
