{"id":24111,"date":"2012-07-27T10:04:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T14:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=24111"},"modified":"2012-07-27T11:02:17","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T15:02:17","slug":"btc-privatization-doubled-government-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2012\/07\/btc-privatization-doubled-government-profits","title":{"rendered":"BTC Privatization Doubled Government Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_24113\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24113\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24113\" title=\"geoff-houston\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/geoff-houston.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/geoff-houston.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/geoff-houston-150x112.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-24113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">BTC CEO Geoff Houston<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The government is receiving almost double the revenue from the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) as a 49 percent owner than it did when it owned the entire company, BTC CEO Geoff Houston said yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 2010, BTC reported annual net earnings of $12.8 million,\u201d Houston said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd since privatization we paid dividends to government of $8.8 million with another $20 million coming this year. So you can say we\u2019ve almost doubled the returns to government in a 12-month period.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Houston addressed Rotarians at the Nassau Sunrise Club\u2019s early morning meeting at the British Colonial Hilton Hotel.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe feel at CWC that we have brought a lot of benefit to the business,\u201d he said, while outlining achievements since Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) purchased a 51 percent stake in BTC in April 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Houston said BTC has benefited tremendously from CWC\u2019s procurement power and that has helped to turn the business around.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I look at a lot of the operating support contracts that we have, we\u2019ve renegotiated all of those, and we\u2019ve actually reduced our operating costs by about $15 million to $20 million by using our existing prices that we have with those same suppliers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo that procurement power, that kind of know-how we\u2019ve been able to bring to BTC to reduce the cost there.<\/p>\n<p>The Ingraham administration planned to offer nine percent of BTC shares to the public. It is unclear whether the Christie-led government intends to follow through on this plan. Prime Minister Perry Christie has started talks on getting a majority stake in BTC back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government is receiving almost double the revenue from BTC due to the privatization of the company, with dividends to government of $8.8 million with another $20 million coming this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[36,40,134],"class_list":["post-24111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-btc","tag-government","tag-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}