Finance Minister Hon. Ralph Fonseca calls it an institutional agreement, we called it a promissory note and it turns out we were right.
7NEWS has obtained a copy of a letter from the International Bank of Miami to Intelco Chairman Glenn Godfrey and Finance Minister Fonseca. Dated March 23, 2004, the letter comes from Ronald M. Hall; the managing Director of the International Bank of Miami and it warns GOB and Intelco that it advises them for the second time that they are almost a month late with a US $337,000 payment on one of Intelco's US $6.7 million loans.
Speaking with Finance Minister Fonseca today, he said that he isn't certain why the payment wasn't made on time or whose fault it was. But Fonseca dismissed it as what he called "a slippage" even if that slippage cost GOB over US $4,000 in late penalty fees.
As to the question of the promissory note, which binds government to pay the Bank of Miami, Fonseca said it's no different than what he had described as an institutional arrangement where instead of paying Intelco directly for phone services it has performed, government pays the Bank of Miami in US dollars. According to our information those US dollar payments will continue for some time as a schedule sent to us shows that the loan runs to August of 2008 with payments of three-quarter million US dollars made eight times a year. So far government has made just two payments and as we noted, the second was a month late.
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