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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2022
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‘Minimal exposure’: Central Bank demands FTX report By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net BAHAMIAN bankers yesterday predicted the industry has minimal exposure to FTX after regulators demanded the sector disclose all business dealings with the collapsed crypto currency exchange. Senior executives said the implosion of FTX and its local subsidiary, FTX Digital Markets, was highly unlikely to pose a systemic or widespread
risk to the Bahamian financial system with Tribune Business able to reveal the Central Bank ordered all its bank and trust companies to swiftly report any exposures to it before last week’s end. Kenrick Brathwaite, Bank of The Bahamas managing director, confirmed the Central Bank had moved swiftly to gain a complete understanding of any potential FTX-related risks for the commercial banking system. He forecast that there was “minimal exposure”
for the sector that focuses on domestic Bahamian and resident customers. “That was sent out,” the BISX-listed bank’s chief said of the Central Bank’s information interrogatory. “I don’t think a lot of banks were involved with that. One other bank had some dealings with them [FTX], and another bank was about to have dealings with them, but I don’t think there’s a lot of exposure from the banking side. No, no.”
He was backed by Gowon Bowe, Fidelity Bank (Bahamas) chief executive, who voiced doubt there would be “any surprises for the Central Bank” in terms of licensees who transacted business with FTX. Confirming that all licensees had to provide the requested information by last Thursday night, he said: “The query was custodian, operational or other exposures, be it credit or otherwise.
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• Sought info on licensee dealings with crypto exchange • PwC accountants join Bahamian provisional liquidation • Over 1m creditors caught in ‘unprecedented’ collapse
Harbour woes ‘threaten life, immense damage’
Manufacturer duty-free approvals shift to online
• Port operator: Breakwater repairs ‘on front burner’ • Staff search hit by ‘extraordinary wage expectation’ • Battling truckers bypassing safety through ‘fraud’
hour (kWh) for so long, despite the hedge’s unravelling, via government loans to the state-owned utility. With the law now blocking the Government from offering straight subsidies, as it has in the past, those loans must now be paid back by BPL consumers via the inflated fuel charges being imposed over the next 14 months. Alfred Sears, minister of public works and utilities, who has responsibility for BPL, previously said the Government has agreed to pay Shell some $90m over the next nine months to eliminate debts owed by BPL for its fuel supplies. While this provides an insight into how much the fuel hedging lapse has cost Bahamians, Mr Pintard suggested the total figure was likely much higher. Speaking after he publicly released a letter to the Prime Minister, asking how much of the fuel charge increase is intended to repay Shell and the Government (taxpayer) plus other questions, Mr Pintard told this newspaper: “We also want to know where they got the funds from [to pay BPL initially] and where they were diverted from. We’re putting a series of questions to them. We’re asking them the same question through every possible means to get an answer.... “The decisions made by the Government, both on the fuel hedging programme and Rate Reduction Bond, two separate issues... the first has cost the Bahamian people in excess of $100m, and we don’t know how deep
THE GOVERNMENT yesterday moved to further enhance the ease and efficiency of doing business by giving Bahamian manufacturers a January 1, 2023, “drop dead date” to start applying for renewal of their duty-free concessions online. Ministry of Economic Affairs officials, in a webinar for local producers to update them on the reforms, revealed that from New Year’s Day they will have to seek renewal of their existing Industries Encouragement Act tax breaks via Bahamas Customs’ Electronic Single Window (ESW) or Click2Clear. Designed to replace the existing manual, paperbased approvals system, officials promised that it will “reduce the waiting time in some instances” when it comes to manufacturers receiving their renewed approvals and “allow for a smooth transition” to the digital, electronic world. Brickell Pinder, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ director of trade and industry, said: “We are currently working with Customs to try and make the portal accessible from December 1 so you would have access to it in the next few weeks, but as of January 1, 2023, all renewal applications have to come through Click2Clear. “For those persons ready to provide renewals we will have the portal ready on December 1 to accept applications, but definitely the drop dead date is January 1, 2023.” The biggest change for Bahamian manufacturers is that they will now have to estimate
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By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net NASSAU’S main commercial shipping port is renewing warnings that failure to repair the harbour’s western breakwater could “result in immense damage to, and threaten life”, in the city centre. Arawak Port Development Company (APD), in its just-released annual report, said reversing the continued deterioration of this protective barrier against storm surge and high seas remains on its “front burner” given the danger posed not just to its own commercial viability but Nassau’s cruise tourism product. The BISX-listed port owner and operator, repeating an annual call for action that goes back at least five years, said it had “an obligation” to continue working with the Government in a bid to see repair work begin during its current financial year which closes at endJune 2023.
“For the new fiscal year and beyond, the restoration of the Nassau Harbour western breakwater will remain on the front burner for APD, owing to the threat this vital barrier’s ongoing degradation poses to the safety of ships entering the harbour to do business with Nassau Container Port and Nassau Cruise Port,” the Arawak Cay port owner said. “Furthermore, this situation impacts the efficiency of, and profitability of, both entities as well as that of the tourism/hospitality plant and other coastal business ventures. Moreover, if erosion of this essential barrier continues, as science and observation have shown us, failure to rebuild could result in immense damage to the city itself and threaten life. We take it as an obligation to continue to work with government to see the project launched in 2022-2023.” Nassau Container Port and its senior executives have constantly urged that
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By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
SHOWN is the impact from continued degradation of the western breakwaters in Nassau Harbour due to storm surge and high seas.
Pintard to take BPL woe to Public Accounts Committee By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE OPPOSITION’S leader says he will place Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) up to 163 percent fuel charge increase before Parliament’s spending watchdog in a bid to uncover how much government “errors” are costing Bahamians. Michael Pintard told Tribune Business he will today “raise” BPL’s fuel hedging and $535m bond refinancing before the House of Assembly, as well as when the Opposition-controlled Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meets this week. He added that the main objective was to establish “some actual figures” for what the Government’s failure to execute the trades underpinning BPL’s fuel hedge have cost Bahamian businesses and households, especially since they will be required to pay “on both ends” - first as taxpayers, then as consumers. Taxpayers essentially financed BPL’s ability to keep its fuel charge at a relatively low 10.5 cents per kilowatt
MICHAEL PINTARD
Water Corp debts to top supplier slashed by 30% By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE GOVERNMENT has slashed the debts owed by the Water & Sewerage Corporation to its main supplier by almost 30 percent or $6.3m during the first nine months of 2022. BISX-listed Consolidated Water, in filing its 2022 third quarter results with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), revealed that the debts owed by the
state-owned water distributor have been cut from $21.5m at year-end to $15.2m at end-September 2022. The Blue Hills and Windsor reverse osmosis plant operator, which supplies all the water consumed by the Corporation’s New Providence customers, said in its 10-Q filing: “At December 31, 2021, Consolidated Water (Bahamas) accounts receivable balances (which
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