The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government was yesterday urged to set an end-June 2016 deadline for Baha Mar’s auction to start, an ex-director for the project describing himself as “amazed” at the subsequent deal granted to its main contractor.

Dionisio D’Aguilar branded China Construction America’s (CCA) labour agreements with the Christie administration over The Pointe project as “a sweet deal”, and suggested they may have been influenced by developments at Baha Mar.

He suggested that the Government may have provided generous incentives/concessions to CCA in a bid to induce it to complete Baha Mar on time, an outcome that never happened.

But, given CCA’s “failure to deliver” at Cable Beach, Mr D’Aguilar said the Government had more than enough justification for “getting tough” with the Chinese over the $3.5 billion development’s sale to another investor.

Based on Tribune Business’s interview with Sir Sol Kerzner’s Baha Mar bid partner, Andrew Farkas, Mr D’Aguilar said the China Export-Import Bank had done nothing, as the project’s financier, to prepare it for a sale.

He called on the Christie administration to set a series of “concrete deadlines” for the bank to meet, describing Baha Mar’s fate as “a matter of national security” given the potential negative economic repercussions.

“If you’re going to get the Government to do the right thing, one of the conditions is that it’s not too hooked on the Chinese Kool-Aid,” Mr D’Aguilar told Tribune Business, in a nod to CCA’s downtown Nassau project.

This newspaper reported yesterday how Baha Mar’s contractor has been granted 500 work permits for The Pointe development, and agreed with the Government a labour force split where Bahamians are in the minority - at 40 per cent.

Describing this as “minimising Bahamian participation”, Mr D’Aguilar added: “You speak to any Bahamian contractor, and they will say over and repeatedly they would easily have done that [The Pointe]. I’m a little amazed at the sweet deal they got.

“The Government should have pushed for a better deal in terms of greater Bahamian participation. It’s not as if the Chinese have a terribly great track record here in terms of hotel construction.”

Mr D’Aguilar said he was “convinced” that the Government agreed to CCA’s labour demands at The Pointe on the basis that it would complete Baha Mar by the target March 27, 2015, completion date.

“CCA probably said: ‘Don’t worry. We’ll come through for you on Baha Mar if you give us this sweet deal at The Pointe’.”

The Government, he added, probably seeing CCA as leading Bay Street and downtown Nassau’s revitalisation after completing Baha Mar, was more than eager to comply.

“The Chinese got these concessions and didn’t deliver on their end of the bargain, finishing Baha Mar,” Mr D’Aguilar said. “Once again, the country’s been short-changed.”

He added that Baha Mar’s current standstill should “embolden the Government to get “claw back something in return”, which is the rapid completion of all due diligence and preparatory work to sell the $3.5 billion development.

“Let’s set a deadline to auction the place. This is too important to our economy to let it sit,” the ex-Baha Mar director told Tribune Business.

“The bank will hold fast, not budge and force the Government to act. They have not made one iota of effort to prepare that project for sale. Nothing. That thing will sit there for years, 10-20 years, and they will not budge from recovering 100 cents on the $1.

“I’d give them [the China Export-Import Bank] another three months, till the end of June. That would be a year since the Chapter 11 action was filed. If we see no movement on that, the Government will have to set some hard, concrete dates to get some movement,” Mr D’Aguilar added.

“This project is too big, too important, the Chinese have failed to deliver, and it’s now time to act in the interests of national security. It could cause a downgrade to our credit rating, and that affects our national well-being.”

Mr D’Aguilar said the Government should not “feel bad about being too aggressive” with the China Export-Import Bank, given that it shares common ownership with CCA in the form of the Beijing government.

“They need to forge on, be aggressive and use the power of the state to force a better outcome,” he added.