Govt. buys B.T.L. shares but resale not final
Last week the Prime Minister expressed his hope on this newscast that the deal to sell B.T.L. would be done by weekend. Apparently that wish has become half true. A brief press release posted today on the website of Carlisle Holdings indicates that the Government of Belize has completed the purchase of Carlisle’s fifty-two percent shareholding in Belize Telecommunications Limited for a price of fifty-seven million U.S. dollars. The other half of the equation, however–that is the purchase of those same shares, plus the twenty-five percent of B.T.L. belonging to the Belize Social Security Board, by Innovative Communication Corporation–has yet to take place. I.C.C.’s Vice President for Public Relations, Rene Henry, today told News 5 that he could not comment on the subject of the sale other than to say that negotiations were ongoing.
Presumably those negotiations revolve around the conditions under which the new B.T.L. would operate–things like taxation, interconnection rates, and the status of any pending lawsuits–in other words the same questions of a “level playing field” that poisoned relations between government and B.T.L.’s previous owner, Michael Ashcroft.
With Ashcroft now paid off and government on the hook for a fifty-seven million U.S. dollar high interest loan from a Miami bank, it does not look like Belmopan has a whole lot of time or leverage on its side. While various local groups may be pressuring government to keep the shares in national hands, those same forces have more mouth than cash. Unless there’s a mystery buyer we don’t know about, it looks like Innovative and its owner, Jeffrey Prosser, may yet force the Belize Government to make the deal that it refused to offer Lord Ashcroft. A press release from the Ministry of Finance late this evening confirms government’s purchase of the B.T.L. shares, but goes on to say that government and Innovative now have thirty additional days to complete the due diligence process and conclude the purchase of B.T.L. shares from the government. The issue of interconnectivity, says the release, remains the subject of consultation with all parties concerned.
