Free National Movement Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis accused Prime Minister Perry Christie of using the country\u2019s financial woes as a \u201ccop out\u201d to explain why the government can not afford to buy back shares in the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC).<\/p>\n
The previous administration sold 51 percent of the shares to Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) in 2011 and the government owns 49 percent.<\/p>\n
Christie has vowed that his administration will ensure the Bahamian people become the majority owners of BTC.<\/p>\n
But on Tuesday he admitted the government can not now afford to buy back shares.<\/p>\n
Minnis predicted yesterday Christie will eventually abandon plans to regain majority control of BTC.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could not have gotten the two percent from [the] onset,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, that\u2019s a publicly traded company. You can not just go in there and take or negotiate two percent like that, but he promised that to the Bahamian people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was to win an election and people bought that.\u00a0 It was a dream that he sold to them, and they bought that dream.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order for that to happen, you\u2019d have to nationalize.\u00a0 If you nationalize, you cause great repercussions, not only for the company, but throughout the world in terms of investor confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, you can have serious effects on the economy. He admitted that we are having financial difficulties. Now he admits that he has to introduce some measures in terms of control within the public sector, etc.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, he is using this as an excuse to say that they don\u2019t have the funds at this time to negotiate the two percent when he knew that he couldn\u2019t do it in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christie has appointed a negotiating committee to talk with CWC about the government\u2019s plans to regain control of the company.<\/p>\n
The prime minister has called the 2011 deal \u201ca very bad deal\u201d.<\/p>\n
When asked about the claim, BTC CEO Geoff Houston said yesterday he could not speak on the matter, which he said was an issue for the shareholders.<\/p>\n
Taneka Thompson<\/strong><\/em><\/span> FNM leader Dr. Hubert Minnis accused Prime Minister Perry Christie of using the country\u2019s financial woes as a \u201ccop out\u201d to explain why the government can not afford to buy back shares in the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC).<\/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":[12],"tags":[36,153,74,142,424,60],"class_list":["post-32359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-btc","tag-business-2","tag-fnm","tag-incompetence","tag-perry-christie","tag-plp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32359","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=32359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Nassau Guardian Senior Reporter<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"