While official sources claim that the Belize economy is rebounding from a recession, there is still financial turmoil troubling many local businesses, including Belize’s lead tilapia exporter, Fresh Catch Belize Limited, which is going into receivership.
We don’t know if the 25% drop in fisheries production in first quarter 2010 had anything to do with the Fresh Catch debacle, as the company was “mum” over the latest developments.
Emile Mena, director of the Mena Group of Companies, headquartered in the capital Belmopan, told Amandala Wednesday when we called him that he could not speak with us at this time about the particulars of the receivership.
Another well-known company under the Mena Group, the Wood Depot, is also going into receivership, according to information reaching Amandala.
The multi-million-dollar red tilapia farming company, Fresh Catch Belize Limited, was inaugurated in December 2002. In October 2005, the company acquired a US$10.6 million debt with First Caribbean International Bank (Barbados) Ltd. and First Caribbean International Bank (Cayman) Limited.
The Wood Depot Company Limited, a company about a decade old, acquired an identical debt of US$10.6 million with the same lenders.
Apart from family funds and local public sector funding from the Development Finance Corporation and the Social Security Board ($3.3 million), the tilapia farm also accessed external project funding to help establish the enterprise.
According to the Inter-American Investment Corporation, Fresh Catch got US$2 million under a $20 million agency line agreement signed between the Inter-American Investment Corporation and Latin American Agribusiness Development Corporation (LAAD) in 1999, to implement a $4.2 million start-up tilapia-farming project.
What had been dubbed a 16-million-dollar project by a Central Bank of Belize report was reportedly to have created 100 permanent jobs and was expected to employ up to 380 people in the third phase with exports of 4,000 tons of tilapia annually.
Another receivership announced recently is that of a major quarry operator in the country—a subsidiary of Johnston International, as well as the parent company. The Ashcroft group is putting Belize’s former Central Bank Governor, Keith Arnold, at the head of the operations.
Meanwhile, via a Belize newspaper notice dated July 21, 2010, an announcement was made that Stanley Ermeav, senior partner of the Horwath Belize law firm, has been appointed receiver and manager of Belize Aggregates Limited (Belagg), Mile 4 ½ on the Northern Highway, Belize City, by the Belize Bank.
Johnston International says that Belagg is its Belize-based limestone aggregate quarrying and crushing operation—the largest in the country, which has since 1930 been operating a quarry with a projected life of 300 years at the Rockville Quarry, Gracie Rock.
Johnston had under the Musa administration in Belize been a leading contractor for a slew of civil engineering projects, among the most notable being the Marine Parade Boulevard, valued at US$10 million. Among the 18 Belize projects listed are the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, Los Lagos (US$9.5 million), the Orange Walk Bypass (US$21 million), the TVET centers in Cayo and Stann Creek, the Radisson Fort George Hotel, the Belize Bank (Belmopan) (BZ$1.5 million), Grand Colony Condos in San Pedro (BZ$8.9 million), the Marina Towers, and Belagg.
The Belize Bank was once a sister company of Johnston International, under the headship of BHI Corp. BHI became BCB Holdings, the new mother company of the Belize Bank, and it now interestingly, reassumes control of the assets and operations of Johnston International via the receivership.
In 1998, Ashcroft’s BHI agreed to sell a batch of assets off to Oxford Ventures, led by BHI’s former CEO, Allan Forrest. Included in the sale were Johnston International, Belize Aggregates, Belize Leisure Limited (owner of the Radisson in Belize City), as well as shares in Belize Food Holdings (26.7%) and Great Belize Productions (36.2%).
It kept, however, its shares (then 26%) in Belize Telecommunications Limited (which later became Belize Telemedia Limited). The deal with Forrest and Oxford Ventures (a Turks and Caicos company) was reportedly sealed in May 1999.
Forrest has recently been quoted in news reports coming out of Turks and Caicos, where he is based, as saying that Johnston is now undergoing a “restructuring;” however, he did not provide details.
Interestingly, it is Keith Arnold, former chairman of Belize Telemedia Limited and one of the men who are challenging the Barrow administration over the re-nationalization of the company, who has been appointed the receiver of Johnston International effective July 7, 2010, according to Turks and Caicos notices.
The nexus here is no mystery. Both Arnold and Forrest are among the persons that the Government of Belize had named among the 10 persons it was hoping to restrain from suing the Government of Belize, via arbitration, over the nationalization of BTL.
BTL acquired Great Belize Productions before the re-nationalization, and before the Government could put its hands on the phone company, the Ashcroft group effected a strategic move by detaching the media company altogether from BTL.
Details of the reported “restructuring” of Johnston International have not been disclosed to the press.
(The Mena group also includes Badi Enterprises and Jebco Construction.)