St. George’s, September 17, 2012 – Grenada’s Finance Minister Nazim Burke has dismissed reports that he had lost the portfolio and had walked out of a cabinet meeting on Monday.
“For the entire duration of that meeting, I was there in my capacity as the Minister of Finance,’’ Burke told the Government Information Service in response to the reports that were posted on social network sites popular with Grenadians.
“It is really said these hopeless and desperate newsmongers have to spend so much time trying to mislead people,’’ added Burke.
The finance minister and NDC deputy leader, who rarely hosts press conferences on the economy and hardly grants interviews with reporters from the local independent media, said his focus is to “keep the Grenada economy functioning and productive.’’
Following the 2008 general election victory of the National Democratic Congress, the party’s leader and Prime Minister of Grenada, Tillman Thomas, appointed Burke Minister of Finance, Planning, Economic Development, Energy and Foreign Trade.
Burke, whom the prime minister has often commended for his management of the economy, has faced criticism from segments of the population over the country’s high jobless rate and failure to implement promises of large capital projects.
Questions have also been raised about the late payment of salaries to government employees twice in the past three months.
After examining Burke’s record, well-known Grenadian journalist and political commentator, Hamlet Mark, described him as the worst finance minister Grenada has had in nearly 40 years.
“If running the Ministry of Finance was boxing, then we would have had a good man in place. This current one is an expert at bobbing and weaving – and getting out of the way,’’ Mark said.
According to Monday’s reports, Burke was being replaced in the Ministry of Finance by Senator Franka Bernardine, the current Minister of Education and Human Resource Development.
Burke said he, too, had heard the “rumours’’ and the untruthful claims that he was dropped as finance minister, and that other government ministers – Glynis Roberts, Denis Lett and Alleyne Walker – had resigned their cabinet positions.
“I am the minister of finance until advised otherwise by the Prime Minister,’’ said Burke.
