Bankrupt D.F.C. to be liquidated

They say that bad news comes in threes and the last leg of today’s trifecta involves the Development Finance Corporation. A terse paragraph forming part of the regular cabinet press release read as follows:

“On the recommendation of the Cabinet Finance Committee, Cabinet has agreed to liquidate the Development Finance Corporation”.

Now this may be news and it may not. On several occasions Government has announced its intention to sell off DFC’s crippled loan portfolio and has mentioned that negotiations are underway with Belize Bank as a possible buyer. That buyer has also paid fifty million dollars to DFC that has variously been described as a “loan”, “downpayment”, “earnest money” and “bailout money”. Until now, however, the impression had always been given that following the highly discounted sale DFC would make a fresh start, returning to its “core function” of providing seed capital for enterprising Belizeans instead of acting as a grab tub for assorted rogues and political cronies. Today’s release however, seems to indicate that DFC will simply cease to exist, while its student and housing loan portfolios would be handled elsewhere. We tried to get this matter clarified with DFC’s general manager Troy Gabb. Gabb, however, legendary for his unavailability to the press, was running true to form by being “out of the office”. DFC rules forbade his secretary from giving us his cherished cell number.

For its part the Opposition UDP criticized that decision to liquidate DFC and called for an independent inquiry. For our part we suspect that if such an investigation was ever done, it would make the crowd at Social Security look like Boy Scouts.