Barrow also discussed the news that both the Chamber of Commerce and the National Trade Union congress - who sit on the Social security investment committee - voted against using social security funds to invest substantially in BTL.
They made a number of objections, including the fact that their representatives had not seen a prospectus - which will not come out until October fifteenth. Barrow today conceded that in that regard, they have a valid point.
Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"If the unions and the chamber want to rest their case on the fact that they didn't see the prospectus, I have to concede that they have an argument, I concede that. Perhaps the vote, the issue might have been delayed in terms of asking the investment committee to take a vote until after the prospectus had been printed and formally publicized. But on the other hand the chairman's position is all the facts that will go into the prospectus are available now, all the figures, all the projections, all the assessments, all the audits are available now. That material was turned over to Social Security. The finance department of the Social Security Board was asked to do a professional evaluation and that evaluation together with the material on which the evaluation was based. Everything was available to the members of the investment committee so I can understand how the chairman legitimately might have felt, well there is no need to wait on the prospectus. But I concede, I try always to look at both sides and I concede that the unions and the chamber have a point when they say we were not prepared to vote yes before seeing the prospectus. Any reasonable, informed decision in my view will tell you that BTL is a can't miss investment. The audited figures are there. The projections are there, having in fact been analyzed and assessed and dealt with, the reported on by external auditors, so this is not any kind of "puss in a bag" situation. How on earth can Telemedia not be profitable going forward?"
And that's just how the investment committee carried the vote with the chairman Nestor Vasquez - who is also the executive chairman of BTL - using his casting vote to gain a majority. Is that a conflict of interest? We'll have Barrow's comments on that next week.
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