No rushing of merger
The merger between the National Petroleum Corporation (NPC) and the Barbados National Oil Company Limited (BNOCL) will not be rushed, and is instead being carefully carried out so as not to disrupt their operations.
That’s according to Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Christopher Sinckler. He made the point last week as he spoke prior to signing a US $34 million loan agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank to finance the execution of a programme dubbed, ‘The Deployment of Cleaner Fuels and Renewable Energies in Barbados’, which among other things will provide technical support to the NPC and the BNOCL to foster organisational and operational efficiencies.
“Given the very critical nature of both energies in relation to the energy sector in Barbados, we want to ensure that whatever we do, does not create both a distraction from their current work, or a disruption from the quality of service which is provided… These two companies of course are sister companies, they are not strangers to each other, they know each other reasonably well [and] what we are trying to do is ensure that operationally, at all levels financial, human resource, technical resources, in terms of assets and so forth, that they come under at least one type of operational management to be able to maximise their capacity and that is what we are doing. But we are doing it very, very carefully given the sensitive nature of both entities in relation to Barbados’ economy and society,” he said.
Meanwhile, touching on Government’s efforts to reform some of the other statutory corporations, he said it is a work in progress, and is focused on those which will give the country value. According to him, the Ministry of Sports has begun “intense work” with the National Sports Council, the Garfield Sobers Gymnasium and Kensington Oval Management Inc and he noted Government has sought to divest some of the economic entities in the tourism industry. He said that one the Hotels and Resorts Limited properties has been leased and two others have been sold.
Sinckler said that in relation to the proposed merger between the National Housing Corporation, the Urban Development Commission and the Rural Development Commission, the legal experts are currently looking at the statutes relating to the entities.
“There are others that efficiencies can be obtained, by making some changes to them and we are doing so. We commissioned a study through the Ministry of Agriculture on the entities in the sugar industry that would be the Cane Industry Corporation, the Agricultural Credit Trust and the Barbados Agricultural Management Company, that work I believe was done by one of the major accounting firms here in Barbados… That report is with Government and again there are recommendations in there on which we can build synergies between those three companies that operate within the sugar sector, as we do the overall reformation programme,” he said. (JRT)