C.G.A.’s Henry Anderson speaks about dividends in C.B.P.L.

Henry Anderson

Anderson also spoke to questions that Sir Allen and Cozier brought up about dividends and the composition of the crowd that protested on Tuesday.

Henry Anderson

“The concerns we had was when a business plan was presented at the board that showed no dividends were going to be paid through 2013. Our directors reacted against it and so that has gone back to draft. But that sent a signal to us that if we have these loans and the only way we get funding or monies from C.P.B.L. is through our dividends. I would like to clarify as well that Mr. Cozier says that Banks Holdings only gets monies through dividends; that’s not true exactly. They get monies through dividends when it’s paid but they also sell products in Barbados under the Pine Hill brand and they make money off that. When C.P.B.L. sells products in Belize, C.G.A. doesn’t get any of that money and it shouldn’t because it’s C.P.B.L. the company. But they will benefit from that as well so they have two streams of making money. What caught our attention as well is when a business plan is presented that is showing no dividends through 2013 and what we were told by our directors there is that—even Mr. Redmond said this to me—that Banks Holdings didn’t seem adverse to that at all. Now when we see that, that sends a red flag.”

Marion Ali

“We’ve heard a lot of comments about the crowd out there yesterday, some of them being banana workers, many of them couldn’t even speak English. Few opf them who I approached to ask them their reason for being out there could not answer me.”

Henry Anderson

“Most of our members don’t speak English. That’s the reality.”

Marion Ali

“Are they termed as growers?”

Henry Anderson

What we demonstrated yesterday was not only growers. We were showing you what the citrus industry is. We were showing you growers, we were showing you truckers.”

Marion Ali

“Were there banana workers out there?”

Henry Anderson

“As far as I know, you may have some because people work on both farms. You have people who have citrus groves who also have banana and you move your labour around but they pick oranges; all of them.”

We’ll see how this full-fledged war between growers and their investor partner plays out.