Global competition means there should be a lot of opportunities for companies to make money for themselves, their employees and their home countries. But he told a group of investors that, between arbitrary government regulation and the inherited British tradition of using national monopoly and job featherbedding as tools of social engineering, the privatisers are competing “with one foot chained to the floor.”
The problem is not singular to The Bahamas or Batelco. It’s just that the drawn-out, off-and-on-again process of selling half the communications company has focused attention there.
Around the world there has been a general recognition that governments do a rotten job of business, and that ridding themselves of their utility white elephants can be a profitable solution to the massive deficits many governments bear.
Particularly in the case of The Bahamas, there has additionally been prodding from international financial watchdogs and credit-rating agencies. They see this country’s shortfall heading into rarified territory in large part because of the insistence on subsidising perennial losers such as Bahamasair, BEC, Sewer and Water and Batelco, and using them as a jobs pork barrel, from which to dispense employment and favours. Dump the losers and lose the debt.
Not that those government corporations need lose money, but inevitably they will if they are used as social welfare agencies and nepotism and cronyism are the keys to the door and to the vaults.
But there are those within both the governmnent and the private sector who say there is no real commitment to privatisation at all in this country, that the whole process is all top dressing and that the only real commitment is to appeasing creditors and getting international agencies to review their financial standings for the country. The bureaucrats have no intention of giving away the fount of their largesse.
If that is so, those companies that spent millions on due diligence and then preparing their business plans, their management teams, and their bids, could be forgiven were they to have a sour taste after the apparently fruitless process, not that any would admit it.
Maybe Mr. Bain’s BahamaTel group was lucky it lost out in its Batelco bid. If this is any indication of how future privatisations will be conducted, it should be no surprise if few suitors come calling.
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
