In a move that is certain to further erode the Bahamas international business reputation, the government is quietly making plans to back out of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company's privatisation process.
The Prime Minister has asked BTC's current executives, an obviously incompetent group of managers, to develop a business plan for the company as if privatisation is not an option. It is highly unlikely that the managers, who include chief executive Michael Symonette and Leon Williams, the chief operating officer, have the brains or the experience to produce such a plan. If they did, one would question why that plan had not been implemented during the last thirty years of inefficient, unprofitable operations.
The Prime Minister's request casts further uncertainty over the status of the privatisation excercise, which has been nothing but a decade long financial nightmare for the people of The Bahamas. Doubts started when the Tenders Commission announced, at the last minute, that they would not meet the July 14 deadline for their selection of a strategic partner until at least September 12.
It is thought that the three bid consortiums, none of whom have telecommunications operations experience, have grown increasingly frustrated and worried over the delays to the process and want the Cabinet to announce its decision within the next week. The three groups' financial backers and operating partners are unlikely to want their capital, technology and expertise sitting idly for much longer, and a failure to announce the strategic partner before September 12 could result in them walking away from the privatisation process.
Analysts are extremely sceptical that current BTC executives, steeped with slackness and incompetence, could ever come up with a plan that would equip the company for a competitive environment.
