Dermon Spence, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Dermon Spence, is pushing back against calls from the auditor general for members of his team be surcharged in relation to donated fertiliser, with no clear indication that it reached farmers.

That’s among the findings of a 2025 Auditor General Department report into the Performance Incentive Programme by the Rural And Agricultural Development Authority.

The report audited a donation of 72,000 bags of fertiliser from Morrocco valued at nearly $350 million. The fertiliser was donated between 2019 and 2023.

In her report, auditor general, Pamela Monroe-Ellis, says more than 11,000 of those bags, worth approximately $54 million, were handed to members of Parliament, MPs, for distribution.

But she found no mechanism to verify whether a single farmer ever received them.

The findings were put to Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Dermon Spence, during Tuesday’s sitting of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

Spence placed the blame of failing to account for where the fertiliser has gone solely on the MPs, who took charge of the product.

According to Spence, to date, 17 of 49 MPs who received the donations have not provided any documentation as to how the fertiliser was distributed.

The permanent secretary conceded that at the time the ministry did not have the capacity to properly handle the magnitude of fertiliser provided.

But he suggests that the call for his officers to be surcharged for the issue has left staff uneasy.

Dermon Spence, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture.

The auditor general, in response, says she’s bound by the law to make the recommendation based on the facts presented.

Pamela Monroe-Ellis, auditor general.