MINISTER of Provincial Government and Institutional Strengthening (MPGIS), David Tome, did not mislead Parliament on debts incurred by the Malaita Provincial Government, it is said.

Permanent Secretary of MPGIS Mr Stanley Pirione made the clarification in response to an article published by this paper last week.

In the article, Premier of Malaita Province accused Minister Tome of making false statements in Parliament that Malaita Provincial Government borrowed $12.6 million.

But, in an inclusive interview with this paper, PS Pirione said Minister Tome’s statement in parliament was the truth and is backed by evidence documents in their possession.

He said the script that Minister Tome presented before parliament was extracted from correspondence made by the Ministry and Provincial Secretary of Malaita Province.

“If the information and statement are incorrect then, the information given to me by the Provincial Secretary of Malaita Province was also incorrect,” Mr Pirione said.

He adds that the article written by Alfred Sasako failed to elaborate further on the structure of Malaita Province’s borrowing issue.

Mr Pirione explained that the amount of $12.6 million was the total credit of Malaita Province since 2013 and that the amount has now decreased to 1.9 million after the current provincial government re-compensated some of the outstanding credits.

He said the outstanding bill is made up of some statutory debts and that Malaita Province hopes to clear all outstanding areas in borrowed funds and statutory charges by the end of this year.

“These are the information I receive; Malaita province begins borrowing in 2013/2014 at a very minimal amount.

“Prior to 2013/2014 Malaita Province has been operated on Over Draft from Banks purposely for salaries. The Province at the same time was not engaging on borrowing funds.

“In 2014/15, Malaita province received an instruction from the Bank that they will no longer allow over draft for Malaita Province. It is said that the advice came from Ministry of Finance and this led the province to begin borrowing funds excessively for salaries and other services.

“Amount and years of borrowing are as follows; 2013/14 – 380,000, 2014/15 – 3,754,000, 2015/16 – 5,004,930 and 2016/17 – 3,780,000.

“Let’s be clear that these figures are totalled up to SBD12, 576,930 as stated by the Minister in Parliament.

“Now, debits for 2013/13 to 2014/15 are all cleared and remaining debit for 2016/2017 is at $1.9 million.

“Part of 2016/2017 debits are statutory debts and they are as follows; SINPF – $822,052, PAYE – $2,326,945 and Payables – less $150,000,” Mr Pirione explained.

He said his ministry has held a meeting on Friday last week over the issue and that understanding has been reached between the Ministry and Malaita Province.

Mr Pirione also provided a copy of the correspondence between the Ministry and Malaita Province on the borrowed fund to this paper as proof of his statements.