The "other" phone company, Intelco is still far from interconnection and according to Chairman Glenn Godfrey, without any revenue, the company is hemorrhaging cash, as much as $200,000 a week.
Well, tonight, that's the good news; the bad news is that when Intelco doesn't meet its bank payments, you're the one paying! 7NEWS has received reliable reports that the government of Belize has had to pay US $734,000 to the International Bank of Miami after Intelco defaulted on two successive payments.
According to our reports, Intelco borrowed US $12 million from the International Bank of Miami. And that's where government comes in. While it didn't give a sovereign guarantee, government came just short when it signed a promissory note agreeing to pay whenever Intelco couldn't.
Well it's about that time...and we are reliably informed that government has already made the last payment of US $367,000 and another is due immediately. Apart from taking from scarce cash resources, we note that for government to guarantee loans for any private company, much less without any public or cabinet disclosure, is a complete departure from what government is obliged or permitted to do.
We could not get comment on this information, as the Minister of Finance Ralph Fonseca and the Prime Minister are both out of the country.