The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

AML Foods is debating whether to move to quarterly dividend payments, its chairman said yesterday, adding that Freeport now accounted for 40 per cent or $60 million of its annual sales.

Addressing the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce as head of Freeport’s largest food retail group, Dionisio D’Aguilar disclosed that the BISX-listed company’s Board and management were discussing whether to move from annual/semi-annual dividends to quarterly payments.

This potential increase in the frequency of shareholder returns will further boost investor confidence in AML Foods, which has completed a major decade-long turnaround since posting a $25 million loss for its 2003 financial year,

The food retail and franchise group, following its recent expansions in both Nassau and Freeport, is expecting to generate $150 million in sales for the year to end-January 2014, with at least $4 million of this flowing to the bottom line.

AML Foods is now at least the second largest food retailer in the Bahamas, and Mr D’Aguilar yesterday described the company as “the largest purveyor of grocery items on the island of Grand Bahama and in the city of Freeport”.

“Over the past eight years, AML Foods has invested over $10 million in its businesses here in Freeport, has created and sustains a workforce of over 200 persons here in Freeport, and generates 40 per,cent or a whopping $60 million of its annual sales from these same businesses here in Freeport,” he added.

“And what should excite any AML Foods shareholders who live here in Freeport is that our current share price of $2.10 is at the highest it has ever been since December 2002 - over 10 years ago.”

Mr D’Aguilar contrasted the proactive, business-friendly treatment AML Foods received from the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) over the opening of its $4 million Solomon’s Lucaya store with the current environment prevailing in Nassau.

“The central government is definitely in a business unfriendly mode right now,” he told the Grand Bahama Chamber.

“Unbelievably, they will disagree with me, but you cannot convince me that they have any interest right now in embracing the business community and coming to us and asking us: ‘How can we help you to grow your business?’, ‘How can we help you by creating the right conditions to launch your new business?’ ‘How can we facilitate foreign direct investment or, for that matter, local direct investment into your community?’

“Instead, they are too busy lambasting business owners as not doing enough to employ Bahamians, even though, in most cases, none are qualified or none are willing to work in the positions that expatriates hold,” the former Chamber of Commerce president said.

“We are chastised as not having done enough to train Bahamians, even though the failures in the public education system, which these very same politicians have control over, makes many Bahamians hard to train.

“Everyone knows that there is an enormous skills gap in our workforce, and such things as work ethic, productivity, timeliness and honesty are traits that the Bahamas scores very unfavourably on in comparison to other jurisdictions.”

Pointing to the ever-increasing burden the Government is seeking to impose on the Bahamian business community, Mr D’Aguilar added: “We are expected to work miracles while the politicians talk about another Public Holiday, the introduction of a confusing and hard to collect Value-Added Tax, a costly Health Insurance scheme, and higher work permit fees.

“Politicians have to realise that it is the business community that will create the 10,000 jobs, not them.”

Despite the millions of dollars sitting in the bank, earning less than 2 per cent interest rates, Mr D’Aguilar said there was no rush by the Bahamian private sector to seek better returns for their money.

“Because there is an unease, there is an uncomfortable feeling that we are heading in the wrong direction,” he said.

“Too much time wasted talking about stupid things like gambling and web shops, and not enough time focusing on how to unleash the investment potential that is clearly pent up.

“But despite all this rhetoric, I think cooler heads will prevail and the realities on the ground will cause all the nay sayers and those with anti-business sentiments to assume their rightful position at the back of the bus, where they belong.”