And so while they are covered, there is still a lot of work ahead - especially for agronomist Hugh O'Brien, he has to make an analysis of the shipping and port charges and determine if they are justifiable. But what does that word precisely mean in the context of the agreement? For ASR/BSI it means that they are sharing legitimate costs with the farmers. But what about the BSCFA? We asked Ortega today:
Jules Vasquez
"So the Economic Analysis by Hugh O'brien if we read from the addendum, it says it will determine whether terminal handling charges and throughput fees, which are costs that you all dispute are justified as port charges that's justified it shall exclusively include a, EXCLUSIVELY include a determination of whether terminal handling charges are indeed chargeable and payable to BSI for direct consumption of sugar and analysis of actual cost of Stevedoring and throughput fees. There are two ways to interpret this Fred you either interpreted that it is justified because I see them paying and I see them charging you now or there is another way to determine justified. But is this a fair charge? Is this something that you could really charge these people? What does justification mean to you? If they are justified, if the charges are justified?"
Alfredo Ortega, BSCFA Chairman
"Well that would be something that our lawyer will have to assist us in that because as you know we have Ms Magali is our lawyer, and she was there around us when this document was developed and sadly as you rightly said that word was not there, but it was asked to be put in place and then she explained to us that look we can work with it and we will be looking forward to when this information comes out and based on the investigation they can look upon and we can have an accountant looking forward into the information."
"One thing we have to be very clear Mr. Jules is that we reached to this point because BSI is trying to condition and we Believe that once they try to condition there is something that is not clear. if things were clear, they would not be going through this route to condition what Mr. Hugh will be investigating if there is nothing to hide there is nothing to be afraid of open the books so that this man can do the work."
And while O'Brien has his work cut out for him, Government has to also come up with a Terms of Reference for the Commission of Inquiry in the next four weeks.
