Madam Speaker, I am authorized by Cabinet to make the following statement on the Special Report of the Auditor General on the Public Accounts for the Financial Year 2023.

Following the public statements made by the Auditor General with respect to her original report on the 2023 Accounts, her baseless assertion that the Ministry of Finance sought to unethically backdate the original 2023 Accounts has been completely refuted. This Special Report does not assist in any way in clearing up the main issue in contention, which resulted from an overstatement of tax refunds, and a subsequent underreporting of net revenue, leading to a $2.6 billion discrepancy in the revenue figures for 2023.

The main point of this Special Report, the expected scope of which was clearly outlined in a letter written by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance to the Auditor General on June 16, 2024, was to clear up that issue.