The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation's (BAIC) 160 employees have been warned to brace for job losses as the "heavily overstaffed" agency awaits the results of a manpower audit.

Bishop Gregory Collie, its chairman, said Strivewise Performance Solutions Group will conduct the human resources and manpower audit as he revealed BAIC may no longer be able to avoid cutting the size of its bloated workforce.

He confirmed that BAIC is "getting ready to conclude a manpower audit" because "the corporation is heavily overstaffed". Bishop Collie added: "We have been trying to maintain the staff levels without having to terminate, but we will see what that audit says and we will let the public know what the conclusions are with respect to that audit.

"So we hope to have that completed very shortly. By the end of February we should have it completed so we can table it to the minister [Michael Pintard], and then we can have further discussions on what the government wants us to do in that regard." Bishop Collie said the "last estimate" placed BAIC's workforce at around 160 employees.

Tribune Business reported in 2018 that BAIC's last financial statements, for the years 2012 and 2013, showed the agency's wage bill increased by more than $600,000 over a two-year period to the point where it was equivalent to 141.5 percent of its total operating revenue.

Those financials, which had a calendar year-end and largely covered the first two years of the former Christie administration, thus revealed that one expense "line item" alone exceeded BAIC's total income in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Its wage bill was almost $1m higher than total income.

Salaries and wages rose from $2.584m in 2011 to $2.846m the following year, and then to $3.193m in 2013, making for a 23.6 per cent increase over the full two-year period.

The accounts, audited by UHY Bain & Associates, revealed that BAIC sustained losses of $2.275m, $2.594m and $2.985m for the same three years, prior to receiving government subsidies of between $2.5m to $2.75m.

The latter sum, paid by the Public Treasury in 2013, was still not sufficient to cover that year's loss, indicating that BAIC and its bloated wage bill were already becoming a significant drain on Bahamian taxpayers some seven years ago. BAIC's accumulated deficit, or total losses over its then-32 year history, were pegged at $36.854m at year-end 2013.

The situation is likely to have only become worse since given that BAIC was one of the public sector agencies targeted for hiring just before the May 2017 general election, as the Christie administration sought to exchange employment for votes in an ultimately futile effort to retain the Government. Some of the BAIC hires received engagement letters giving their start date as May 9 - one day before the election.

Bishop Collie, meanwhile, admitted that BAIC's accounts had not been subject to an external audit since 2014 - almost six years ago. So we are outstanding for an external audit for 2014 to 2018," he added.

"We are currently, feverishly trying to get those audits completed in a meaningful time. We are currently at 2014, and we suspect that we should shortly be moving on to 2015 and, hopefully by the next 60 days, to have the whole audit completed."

Accounting firm BDO Mann Judd is performing the external audit work. "The Board is feverishly working hard to get that resolved so that the public will know, and have a full accounting, on what has transpired over those years here at BAIC. Hopefully once we have completed 2014 to 2018 we will move swiftly to complete 2019 so that we can be up-to-date," said Bishop Collie.