The Belize Chamber of Commerce made their position on the Speednet acquisition known yesterday when they signed onto a joint release stating their disapproval. Like the other social partner groups, they don't believe that sufficient consultation was done and that enough information has been disclosed.
Today BCCI's president amplified that, explaining that they see this as a "seller-driven" deal and feel that BTL should have instead invested that money into its own company. Here's how he put it:
Giacomo Sanchez, President, BCCI
"As you will appreciate, the BCCI isn't against any type of merger in business and interfering with private matters. But this is significantly of a public nature given that the government has a great deal of interest and of course Social Security's participation as an equity holder in BTL and if you look at the over the past few months the issue came up and we addressed it at the time and then there were consultations. Coming out of consultations, we were still not satisfied that we were getting value for money. We're still not satisfied that the regulatory environment is there to give any comfort to consumer post acquisition by BTL of this Smart/Speednet enterprise."
"We should have put in the proper legislative safeguard and guard rails and then we can see the proceeding of a fluid transaction, however there was a rush and I honestly don't know why there was a rush in concluding because to me it was more a seller driven transaction rather than a buyer driven transaction which is not good for the people of Belize."
"I would have preferred, or at least if I was in their shoe, to spend the $80 million on improving BTL's infrastructure, particularly in the area of cloud environment. That to me, that's where some money can be made for BTL going forward. Hence, I just don't see the logic behind it."
