PM Barrow Says $97 Million BCB Settlement is B.T.L.’s Liability

And while he claims things are going downhill at the utility company, Briceño says it’s going to get much worse since apparently B.T.L. will be made to take on the ninety-seven million dollar BCB Holdings settlement, or at least a significant portion of it. On Wednesday, P.M. Barrow admitted that the liability is for the government-owned B.T.L. and not for the government of Belize.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“We haven’t yet concluded the way we are going to treat that. As a matter of law, subject to whatever arrangements we want to make, and we will want to make arrangements, B.T.L. is owned by us and that liability is not for the government. That liability is for B.T.L., so that’s not – I don’t see that you can include that in the calculations with respect to the nationalization of B.T.L. and what this award is about at all at all.”

Dean Barrow

Reporter

“But has government already paid that and is there indeed a letter form Fin Sec to B.T.L. telling them about a twenty year loan with a bullet payment at the end of twenty years?”

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“Remember we paid that, we paid that, and I am sure the Fin Sec has been writing to B.T.L. making certain proposals but nothing has yet been settled. I am saying that you might think that given that we now have to deal with this award that government cannot afford to be generous to B.T.L., but you’d be mistaken. Government, I am saying, is absolutely proud of this acquisition, proud of the way it’s been managed and run by our locals, proud of what is being done now to in fact ensure that B.T.L. will be the most nimble, effective, successful telecommunications company certainly in Belize, which isn’t hard because there are only two, but regionally. Government will have to look at everything, weigh up in the balance what we can and cannot do, but we have every intention of not driving a hard bargain with B.T.L.”