Belize News 7
June 15, 2009

Used to be that BEL’s annual general meetings were open to the media – and why not, after all it may be a private company but it is a public utility –with Social Security having invested $65 million of workers’ money into the company. But after Fortis boss Stan Marshall’s ill-advised threats last year about implementing rolling power outages and his unfortunate personal insults against Public Utilities Commission Chairman John Avery incensed the public, it seems BEL figured it would be best not to have any cameras in the room this time around. So we were denied access to the annual general meeting which was held at an unusual time, 2:30 in the afternoon at the Biltmore.

And while we couldn’t be there, we’re sure we could hear the corporate wailing all the way at our office in the downtown area, because even though it seems to be swimming in a sea of liquidity, BEL says its has empty pocket syndrome. The company is reporting a $10.8 million loss on record earnings of $176 million. It’s return on shareholders’ equity tumbled from 11.9 per cent in 2007 to a negative 4.3 per cent in 2008.

And according to BEL, guess who’s to blame for those losses? The PUC, of course! BEL says the dismal performance is a direct result of a $36.2 million charge imposed by the PUC. The PUC on the other hand maintains that BEL’s loss is nothing more than a faulty accounting treatment – and that the company should in fact be showing a profit of somewhere in the region of $26 million.

And while they fight about seven and eight figure numbers, what it means to you is that Social Security, the workers insurance fund took a multi million dollar hit. As an associate of BEL with a 27% shareholding – Social Security estimates that it lost out on a dividend of about $2.9 million. As the second largest shareholders, Social Security has made it known to the power company it does not agree with the accounting treatment and intends to challenge it.

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