News that Winn-Dixie had signed off on the deal last week prompted reports that Perry Christie’s administration had agreed to approve the take-over.<\/p>\n
But yesterday these reports were denied when a government source said that Christie’s cabinet was waiting for the results of a review – put together by the National Economic Council – before making a decision.<\/p>\n
“The government has made no decision on the local purchase of City Markets,” a government insider said. <\/p>\n
The deal has been criticised as controversial because BSL selected Barbados Shipping & Trading (BS&T), a Barbadian company, “to provide management oversight” for the 12 stores. <\/p>\n
Critics claim the Barbadian company’s involvement compromises legislation reserving participation in the food distribution industry for Bahamians.<\/p>\n
BS&T, listed on both the Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchanges, is involved in the retailing and food distribution business, and also invests in other economic sectors. <\/p>\n
Franklyn Butler, one of BSL’s board members, confirmed that the purchase of the stores was backed by capital investments from BS&T. He said that in the future BS&T could become shareholders in BSL. <\/p>\n
By: BARRY WILLIAMS, The Nassau Guardian<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The government is waiting for a regulatory agency review before deciding whether to rubber-stamp BSL Holding’s $56 million take-over of City Markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243051","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}