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FM
Former Member

Was a cost-benefit analysis done?

Apr 14, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....nefit-analysis-done/

The government reportedly spent one hundred and sixty million dollars to renovate the old Customs Building on Main Street as the new home for the Bureau of Statistics. The government could have taken that same amount of money and built a new structure for the Bureau of Statistics.

Why is it that the government is imposing hardships on parents by taxing private education in the hope of raising about $240M when it is going to use $160M of that money in such a wasteful manner.

The Bureau of Statistics does not need a single home. The idea of such a government entity having a single home is a perplexing one.

Consolidation makes sense in the context of cost savings from rentals and lower operating costs. Was that analysis done by the Ministry of Finance or did it simply fall prey to the romantic notion that the Bureau needed a single home.

There is nothing wrong with a government agency being housed at multiple locations. The Ministry of Education has a number of offices and locations within the city alone. This is a flexible arrangement that works well. The Ministry of the Presidency is no different. The Ministry of Public Health is the same.  What do you think will happen if every Ministry which provides a service to the public suddenly feels that it is entitled to a single home?

The Passport Office is now decentralized. This should have happened a long time ago. There was never any justification for asking persons from the distant parts of Guyana to travel to Georgetown just to obtain a new passport. With the use of technology it is more than possible for the applications to be submitted either online or physically, at one location, and processed at another location. There is no need for all services and data to be in a single space. We are living in a different era and this idea of the Bureau needing such a large building makes no sense at all, much less a single home.

A hundred and sixty million dollars is a lot of money to pay for renovations of a single building. Could that money not have purchased or constructed a building that could have housed the Bureau in a single place, as seems was deemed necessary?

The bigger question is, if it costs one hundred and sixty million dollars to renovate the old Customs House, what would it cost today to build such a structure? Should we be complaining about the cost of the Kato School which is an area in which building supplies have to be freighted in?

The other question is, whether the VAT on private education is justifiable if this is the use to which that money is being placed? The government has an over-bloated Budget. It cannot and will not be able to spend all that money which it has budgeted for 2017. There is simply not the absorptive capacity within the country for that spending, unless of course, foreign contractors and workers are brought in.

The high cost of renovating the old Customs House Building on Main Street requires the government to examine its expenditure policies to determine whether all the breaking and  rebuilding it is doing is worth the cost.

What additional benefits will the Bureau of Statistics gain from having a single home as against having three or four homes or a single home elsewhere? Where is the cost-benefit analysis? Was any done? In the interest of transparency, the government should publish it. It would be tragic if the government undertook such a costly expenditure without the benefit of a cost-benefit analysis.

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