It will take at least another two weeks before the final cost to taxpayers of the Fifth Summit of the Americas is tallied, says Trade and Industry Minister Mariano Browne who chaired the Cabinet sub-committee on the event.

Browne was commenting on speculation that the cost of hosting the summit has exceeded $1 billion.

Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday claimed yesterday that the Government spent more than $1 billion on the event.

Browne, however, said that both the summit and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held in November in Port of Spain had a total projected cost that was less than $1 billion.

He said that a ’post-mortem’ of the summit was now under way to determine where there were any deficiencies so as to learn from such mistakes since it was the first time this country hosted such an event.

’The total (projected) figure of both conferences was $632 million. I think that was the number and included in this one we made some downpayments in respect to the other conference (CHOGM),’ Browne said.

He further said, ’We have to do split accounting for us to kind of work that out and get all the numbers in position and it’s still a bit early for that. Two weeks time is just to clear, sort out our bills and so on.’

He said that, for example, the total projected cost for vehicles for both events was $42 million.

’In this (summit) programme we would have spent the $22 million with respect to the first set of cars,’ he said.

Asked if the total cost of the summit was expected to be close to $1 billion, Browne said, ’No.’

Browne also noted that four international suppliers were paid for providing reservation, accreditation, international media and conference services for the summit.

’Those are four international suppliers which was done on tender arrangements to facilitate it. It was a split payment, in other words, a certain percentage of the payment covers up front expenses for this conference and a certain percentage of it also deals with the conference which will come up,’ Browne said.

Other expenses for the summit would have included the cost of security, the upgrade of the old terminal building at the Piarco International Airport and the sprucing up of parts of Port of Spain and the Churchill-Roosevelt and Beetham Highways.

Speaking to i95fm yesterday, Panday claimed the Government went overboard with its budget for the summit at a time when that money should have been spent on the needs of those living in this country.

’This government spent one and a half billion dollars on this conference, more than it cost to the UNC to build an entirely new airport ... if we were swimming in money and so on that’s all right, but the point is there are more important things,’ Panday said.