Ministers to be grilled on business issues

Government ministers are to be grilled soon about banking, trade licences, employment and other business-related topics during the question-and-answer segment of the House of Assembly meeting scheduled to resume today.

Many such questions will be directed to Deputy Premier Lorna Smith, who is also the minister of financial services, trade and labour.

Opposition member Marlon Penn, for instance, is scheduled to ask for the number of trade licence applications submitted during the first half of this year, including how many of them were approved and how many were denied, according to the order paper for the meeting.

Mr. Penn (R-D8) also plans to ask long it took to approve or deny each application, as well as how many of the applications are still pending and the timelines associated with each. Additionally, he wants to know if the Department of Trade, Investment Promotion and Consumer Affairs is requiring people to have degrees in the areas in which they wish to establish a business.

If so, he plans to ask Ms. Smith (R-at large) to explain, “Where in statute or policy approved by Cabinet or the House of Assembly [is a provision] that gives the department the authority to do this?”

Mr. Penn will also ask the minister whether or not she “intends to establish a committee of the whole House for financial services to facilitate an ongoing dialogue” on the industry.

Banking

Three questions to be posed by Opposition Leader Ronnie Skelton deal with banking and deposits.

Mr. Skelton (R-at large), for instance, plans to ask for the “total number of bad debt” held by each banking institution in the territory as of the end of April this year.

He will also ask how many general and restricted banking licences have been issued, and the total number of loans issued during that same timeframe.

Opposition member Mitch Turnbull (R-D2) plans to ask Ms. Smith about the unemployment rate in the territory and what she intends to do to address “the chronic issue of unemployment, particularly among [young] males and females in the territory.”