The Tribune

THE Free National Movement hit out at PLP chairman Bradley Roberts yesterday, calling on him to “desist from his continuing propaganda” and see that the government fulfils its campaign promises.

Opposition party chairman Charles Maynard said in a statement that the PLP made many promises to the public, a number of which they pledged to fulfil within 100 days of the election.

The FNM went on to categorically deny Mr Roberts’ recent assertions on the circumstances that led to BEC’s near financial and operational ruin.

The statement said: “Indeed, the Free National Movement reiterates the words of BEC’s former chairman, that it was the ill-advised, illogical, ill-conceived BEC 2003 rate reduction, introduced during Roberts’ tenure as minister responsible for BEC, and not any action during the FNM’s term, that dealt the corporation a most crippling blow and brought about its near financial and operational demise.

“The modest tariff increase introduced by the FNM has commenced nursing BEC back to good health.”

This came in response to Mr Roberts’ claim that the possibility of further blackouts this summer is the result of the mismanagement of the corporation by the former government.

The FNM statement noted that during the last PLP stint in office, BEC’s consultant, PA Consulting Inc, warned following a late 2005 review that the corporation’s finances “had deteriorated to a danger zone”.

The consultant’s January 2006 report noted that deterioration in the corporation’s financial health was almost immediately evident as during the 2003/2004 financial year, BEC “experienced negative cash flow of over $7 million”.

The FNM said: “The consultant pointed to an urgent need for a rate increase, suggesting that if the word ‘increase’ would prove to be an embarrassment to the government (given implementation of the recent rate reduction) words such as ‘rate rationalisation’ or similar could be used. The consultant’s recommendation was ignored.

“The corporation lost $2.9 million in the fiscal year ended September 2006, with losses progressively worsening until the trend was finally reversed in 2010 following the modest tariff increase by the FNM.

“Significant erosion of profitability was evident from as early as 2004. However, it was masked by write-back of prior bad debt provisioning during that year. And, had it not been for sale of the Cable Bahamas shares acquired by BEC during the FNM’s prior term, BEC’s 2005 profit would have been a miniscule $2.5 million.”

The FNM said that as a direct consequence of the financial “danger zone” into which BEC was plunged by the PLP’s actions, the corporation’s balance sheet was no longer able to support direct borrowings and became dependant on government financial guarantees.

The corporation was also deemed to no longer be credit worthy by many of its suppliers and was therefore relegated to conducting much of its business on a “cash in advance” basis, the opposition party said.

“The FNM urges Roberts to desist from his propaganda. The FNM also calls upon the Member for Tall Pines and current BEC chairman (Leslie Miller) to speedily lay a copy of January 2006 PA Consulting Inc report on the table of the House so that its contents may become publicly available and the chips fall where they may.”