Michael Ashcroft restructures his banking business…
He has close to two hundred investments in countries around the globe and as such Lord Michael Ashcroft has quite an insight into economics. Today, he stopped by the Open Your Eyes morning show and for about an hour, he touched on a wide range of issues. Ashcroft has been having his own share of economic woes, mostly in his dealings with the Government of Belize and the two have been involved in several very public legal battles. According to the businessman, the now antagonistic relationship and the recent extraction of thirty-one million dollars from the Venezuela money and back taxes has led him to restructure his banking business. And it is the productive sector that will feel the pinch.
Lord Michael Ashcroft
“Even though we have a market share of forty-one percent, we lend sixty-nine percent to the agricultural sector, sixty-eight percent to the marine product sector, seventy-five percent to the mining and exploration centre and a staggering seventy-seven percent to the tourism sector. And these are areas that traditional banks have been more reserved in backing entrepreneurs and this is balanced by the fact that on the easy lending of consumer credit, we only have sixteen percent which is a sector that sucks in imports and takes foreign exchange out of the country. So Belize Bank has been very responsible and responsive to the long-term needs of Belize and one of the reasons that we have been able to do that is because we act more like business people than bankers and can understand the business plans of entrepreneurs. But because of what has happened, we have taken a policy decision that we want to diversify away from Belize and that we want to move to be a more traditional bank. Therefore, it’s important now that fresh people come in who can review the strategic objectives of the bank and start over the next two or three years of moving the bank into a different direction. So we will now be reluctant to lend to the productive sector, we’ve got to recover the thirty-one million. We may have to call in some loans, we have started the process of increasing interest rates. We will do nothing that will rock the stability of the economy, but basically we want to move away from Belize; diversify into the U.S. dollar.”
Additionally, Ashcroft says that he has changed the name of the bank he operates in the Caribbean from the Belize Bank to the British Caribbean Bank. He says the move was because carrying the tag Belize was counterproductive to its development as it is difficult while the home bank is being harassed by the government and the regulators.
