The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

FOCOL Holdings’ largest shareholder has described its $2.918 million purchase of a Freeport gas station as “a significant acquisition”, emphasising the company cannot “stand still” when competing against multinational giants.

Franklyn Wilson told Tribune Business that the purchase of Boulevard Services’ Sunrise Highway-based gas station fitted with FOCOL’s drive to improve service quality “and let everyone know Shell is the best brand”.

The BISX-listed company will take over the gas station’s operations, and assume all its assets and liabilities, rebranding it under the ‘FOCOL’ name.

“Our main thrust is to continually improve the quality of service to the public,” Mr Wilson told Tribune Business. “That’s what this thing is all about.

“We live in a competitive environment. You just can’t sit when you’re competing against Esso, when you’re competing against Texaco (RUBIS).

“We’re competing against world quality, huge companies. You have to remember we’re up against companies that are not just Mom and Pop stores - they’re the largest companies in the country.

“You can’t run this business without a very high degree of sophistication, because we’re up against giants. This is not easy, and we have to be very sophisticated in our management.”

Emphasising that FOCOL took its responsibility of paying shareholder dividends every quarter “very seriously”, Mr Wilson told Tribune Business the company had achieved little movement from the Government when it came to the increased Business Licence fees being imposed upon it and the wider petroleum industry.

“Our taxes are going up, and at the end of the day, we are where we are. We have to deal with this reality,” he explained.

“They [the Government] make the rules. We requested relief, they listened a little, but ultimately they didn’t change the rules of the game fundamentally. Life has got to go on.”

Mr Wilson had previously urged the Government to “consider very carefully” the impact Business Licence fee increases would have on FOCOL’s hundreds of Bahamian investors, adding that the firm’s payment was set to “triple” to around $3 million.

Mr Wilson, who is also the Arawak Homes and Sunshine Holdings chairman, previousy told Tribune Business that the Government was increasingly employing the oil companies - FOCOL, Rubis and Esso - in “the critically central role of tax collectors”.

Noting that the Business Licence fee was one of many taxes levied on the oil/petroleum industry, Mr Wilson said the sector was ill-placed to respond because it was both price controlled and ‘high sales volume, low profit margin’.

Given that both wholesale and retail margins are governed by price control, the oil/petroleum sector is a volume business, and it cannot pass the impact of an increased tax burden on to consumers.

As a result, the effects of the proposed Business Licence fee increase on FOCOL, which is seeing its rate more than double from 0.75 per cent to 1.75 per cent, will be felt directly on the bottom line.

Taking FOCOL’s 2012 annual results as an example, the roughly $2 million increase in Business Licence fees would amount to 11.8 per cent of its bottom line.