ROBERTS ANSWERS GRANT ON BAHAMASAIR
Mr. Grant is up to mischief again in the publication appearing in the Tribune June 13, 2005.  As I have been reporting, the Bahamasair Privatization exercise is progressing as expected.  The Consultants are still in dialogue with Executive Management and the Unions as to how best to achieve a Low Cost National Flag Carrier Business Plan within our indigenous context.  As you would expect there are differing views but in the end reasonable conclusions will be drawn and I am confident that a saleable Business Plan will result.
 

The Government has already agreed in principal to cleansing Bahamasair’s Balance Sheet of debt unrelated to revenue generation and the dormant Government related payables all of which in reality resulted from withheld or deferred capital.  No potential investor would be interested in taking on debt used to pay past due US Taxes of converted Bank overdrafts.  To assume they would, could only be attributed to investment naïveté. Mr. Grant should know better as he has been in management for a long time and should by now understand these things.
 

As I have explained before the $1,000,000 McKinsey consultancy fee was approximately one third of the average bids we got to do the job.  We short listed three of the best in the business; Lufthansa, SHE/Peat Marwick and McKinsey.  The bids ranged between $2.5 and $3.5 million.  It was after we committed to provide a lot of the data and analysis we were able to reduce the McKinsey fee down to $1 million.  The $300,000-500,000 mentioned by Mr. Grant could only be his uninformed smoke screaming once again.  Mr. Grant may wish to compare the million paid to McKinsey with the tens of millions the FNM Government frittered away on the botched BaTelCo Privatization which still remains an entangled mess.

Naturally some of what McKinsey observed would have come up before; however they brought lots more to the process in light of the present turbulent airline environment especially the many union concessions negotiated recently.  The comparative statistics they provided is most instructive and will greatly assist in getting us to where we need to be.  There is no discrepancy with respect to load factors.  These numbers are published every month by us which we would have provided to them.  So where can there be a discrepancy.  Mr. Grant needs to be better informed before he spouts off.

Bahamasair is professionally run with reliable financial and operational reports provided monthly.  We would be happy to include him on the mailing list if he is interested.  Get with it Mr. Grant.
Regards,
Bradley B. Roberts, MP
Bain and Grants Town,
Minister of Works and Utilities