BAIC bailout - and more to come

As of Friday, January 11, 2019

EDITOR, The Tribune.

The Tribune advised this morning that BAIC has received a $500,000 bailout from the taxpayers money to pay down the $3.123m debt of that corporation.

Employees’ NIB contribution of $700,000 are part of this $3.123m.

The $700,000 represents monies for the most part deducted from employees cheques, under the previous administration, but not paid to NIB.

The BAIC cash position has improved, and the $3.123m debt has been paid down to $2.573m. Kudos to the BAIC executive chairman, Michael Foulkes and his team.

The current paydown of the debt, however, does not include the $700,000 owed to NIB. Mr Foulkes expressed the “fervent hope” that this year with the help of the Government, that the missing $700,000 will be paid to NIB.

The Government can only assist with more money from the taxpayers.

As a taxpayer, and in the interests of Transparency and Fiscal Responsibility, I would also like to express my fervent hopes for this year:

That this Government determine where the missing $700,000.00 went.
That this Government has the will and employs the means to make sustained efforts to recover the $700,000.00.
That this Government will declare what debts were incurred by BAIC, whether they were properly incurred, and what efforts will be made to bring to account those not properly incurred.

Meantime I suppose we can enjoy what may be the most expensive local tomatoes and bananas on the planet.

LEANDRA ESFAKIS

Winton,

Nassau,

January 8, 2019.

DDK 5 years, 3 months ago

Don't hold your breath on your three hopes Ms. Esfakis. This is the BAHAMAS GOVERNMENT you are speaking about!

Well_mudda_take_sic 5 years, 3 months ago

The likes of Sir Snake's crony Wendall Jones of Jones & Co (a company that Snake has kept financially propped up for its media bias favouring the PLP) was for years deducting NI contributions from its employees' pay but did not pay the amounts deducted, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, over to NIB until sued by NIB for not doing so several years ago. As most of us know, Snake and Jones are birds of a feather when it comes to greed and fraud. Jones is probably once again significantly in arrears when it comes to media organizations' required NI contribution payments.

Because NIB does not produce an annual statement of each participant's account, for mailing to or pick-up by the participant, most Bahamians have no idea that more than often not the NI amounts deducted from their pay are not being paid by their employer to NIB. Only when they reach retirement age do these poor souls get told by NIB that they will not get the benefits they expected because they were screwed by their past employers, many of whom have since gone out of business a long time ago.

And most of these poor souls are simply incapable of using the internet to verify that all of their contributions have been received by NIB. It's an endemic situation. Meanwhile government's answer is to continuing raising NIB contribution rates and the VAT rate so that the national insurance fund stays afloat, at least for the near term. But the day of reckoning is fast approaching whereby the NIB Ponzi scheme will collapse. LMAO

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