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FRIDAY, MAY 14, 2021
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BPL races to get $535m bond ‘across finish line’
By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
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AHAMAS Power & Light (BPL) is racing to get its $535m refinancing “across the finishing line”, its chairman said yesterday, amid growing scepticism over whether the bond issue will actually happen. Dr Donovan Moxey told Tribune Business the stateowned energy monopoly and its financial advisers had “made significant progress” in preparing the rate reduction bond (RRB) for launch to local and international investors despite missing several issuance dates already this year.
• Chairman: ‘We’re doing everything we can’ • As scepticism grows following missed dates • End May/early June targeted for placement
DR DONOVAN MOXEY However, he dismissed growing speculation that the bond - which he described as “critical” to placing BPL on a sustainable financial footing - will
not take place, although he declined to provide a launch date on the grounds that previous ones have been missed. “We are doing everything we can to get this completely across the finish line,” Dr Moxey told this newspaper. “We have made significant progress and are moving forward. I don’t know why anyone would have the basis to say it’s not going to happen. “All I can say is that things are moving forward positively. We’re working
as hard as we can to get the bond launched.” He added that the bond issue’s joint “book runners” and placement agents, CIBC FirstCaribbean and Citibank, would confirm a closing date once it launched. Tribune Business sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, yesterday suggested that BPL’s $535m refinancing was now targeting a late May/early June launch, but added that they
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‘No way on God’s earth’ is livable wage $2,625 By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE National Tripartite Council’s vice-chair yesterday blasted “there’s no way on God’s green earth” that Nassau’s monthly living wage is $2,625 as unions hailed the finding as vindicating their stance. Peter Goudie, who also heads the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s labour division head, told Tribune Business the authors of a University of the Bahamas (UoB) study which found New Providence’s living wage was almost triple the existing minimum wage “have to be out of their minds” and “absolutely dreaming”. Warning that The Bahamas “cannot afford” such an increase, especially amid the
• Tripartite vice-chair blasts ‘astounding’ UoB findings • But unions hail results as minimum wage vindication • Research figures ‘a rabbit we will continue to chase’
PETER GOUDIE
BERNARD EVANS
OBIE FERGUSON
COVID-19 pandemic, as “a whole bunch of businesses” would be forced to close, Mr Goudie also questioned why such “astounding” findings were never discussed with the private sector or other stakeholders before their publication. Trade union leaders,
though, argued that the research backed their longheld position that the $210 weekly minimum wage is nowhere near sufficient to provide a decent standard of living and quality of life for workers in the lower reaches of the Bahamian workforce.
Bernard Evans, the National Congress of Trade Unions of The Bahamas (NCTUB) president, said the findings by a team from UoB’s Government and Public Policy Institute supported his argument that
Mature small businesses in ‘50/50 survival toss-up’ By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net A SMALL business consultant says it is “a 50/50 toss up” as to whether many of his more “mature” small business clients can survive the Bahamian economy’s slow bounce back from COVID-19. Mark A Turnquest, president of the proposed 242 Small Business Association and Resource Centre, and head of his own consulting firm, said the struggles of his long-standing clients contrasted with a wave of new entrepreneurs he is mentoring who have accessed the
MARK A TURNQUEST $5,000 grant offered by the Small Business Development Centre (SBDC). However, he revealed that his larger small and medium-sized clients are now “struggling” in many instances to repay the up to $20,000 Business Continuity
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Businessman reveals Dorian tax relief woe
By YOURI KEMP Tribune Business Reporter ykemp@tribunemedia.net A GRAND Bahama business yesterday complained the Customs Department is not approving Dorianrelated duty exemptions even though his clients have Department of Inland Revenue permission. Brent Collins, Freeport-based Power Equipment’s chief executive, told Tribune Business he is dealing with several customers who put in for duty and VAT relief on generators under the Special
Economic Recovery Zone (SERZ) order. Several informed him that the Customs Department in Grand Bahama is not approving these applications despite their possession of exemption letters from the Department of Inland Revenue. Mr Collins said: “I was supposed to call a friend of mine at Bahamas Customs to find out if that’s true or not, but considering what’s still going on here that exemption needs to last until Freeport is fully restored.
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BISX-listed fund eyeing first dividend in decade By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
THE BISX-listed Bahamas Property Fund could next year pay its first dividend for a decade if it can capitalise on momentum from a new government tenant to hit a 70 percent average occupancy. Michael Anderson, the Property Fund’s chairman, told Tribune Business that it had brought occupancy rates at its flagship Bahamas Financial Centre property in downtown Nassau back in line with this target after the Registrar General’s Department executed a lease to rent one-sixth of its 100,000 square feet. With its Providence House property 100 percent leased, he added that the remaining challenge was to solve the 70 percent vacancy rate at it third and final property, Paradise Islandbased One Marina Drive, which has been especially hard-hit by the COVID-19 related tourism shutdown. Arguing that high-end commercial office space has “been a tough market for at least the last 10-15 years” since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Mr Anderson said the Bahamas Property Fund was also eyeing a potential shopping centre acquisition - which he declined to identify - as a means to diversify its portfolio of real estate holdings. With banks and trust companies in the international financial services industry largely continuing to work from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he added that the government’s decision to lease a significant portion of the Bahamas Financial Centre for its agency had come as a timely relief. “We’ve been fortunate in that we were able to rent out some space to the government,” Mr Anderson told this newspaper. “That
MICHAEL ANDERSON lease finally went through at the Financial Centre. That lease was waiting for 18 months to get finalised. The Registrar General’s Department is taking 16,600 square feet. “They’re moving in. The lease was signed a week or so ago. I think we’ve been at just over a 40 percent vacancy rate there. This brings us to just over 30 percent, or a 70 percent occupancy rate, which is obviously an improvement over where we’ve been. “Historically, most commercial office spaces have expectations of a 90 percent occupancy rate, so being down at 70 percent is not great but, taking into account the situation at the moment, it’s a good boost for the Property Fund and a step up for the occupancy rate.” The Bahamas Property Fund’s 2020 audited financial statements have yet to be released, but Mr Anderson said both its Bahamas Financial Centre and One Marina Drive properties felt the full force of COVID-19’s economic devastation as tenants opted to either work from home or pull out completely. This was especially felt at One Marina Drive, a property targeted at tourism-related businesses in the attraction and excursion industry, whose enterprises were either shutdown or heavily restricted by COVID19 public health measures for the majority of 2021.
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