Berbice Bridge Company should publish latest audited financial statements

Dear Editor, The Berbice Bridge Company Incorporated (BBCI) on 16th October 2018, announced across-the-board increases for both vehicles and boats. The increase for various classes of vehicles, freight and boats was 265 per cent and above. I must emphasise that what is being written, is based on information published in the news media over the last three days.

I have read that the BBCI’s claims that it has up to $6 billion in debts including dividends to shareholders, and accumulated losses in excess of $2.8 billion. Further, that private sector entities have contributed $5.1 billion/US$24 million and the overall cost, which includes the approach roads, was about US$40 million.

I have seen private sector entities publishing their Audited Financial Statements with Accompanying Notes in the news media. Presently, there has been no publication of the BBCI’s Audited Financial Statements to support the “numbers” the Chairman of BBCI has been mentioning. What a disaster! Tolls are to be increased at the most alarming rate, yet no one knows how they were determined. May I state that best practices globally will adopt gradual toll increases, for example, 20 to 30 per cent in year one, 15 to 20 per cent in year two, etc.

The citizens of Guyana need to be updated by the Chair and the Board of BBCI of its financial position, its operations and its cash flows at 30 June 2018. In order to justify the massive increase in tolls, it should disclose its latest audited Financial Statements, and its Interim Financial Statements to 30 June 2018. The Financial Statements I am referring to are the Statement of Financial Position, the Comprehensive Income Statement, the Statement of Equity, the Statement of Cash Flows, and the Accompanying Notes to support those four Statements. I am not saying that the numbers quoted above are not true, they have to be extracted from the Financial Statements, hence let’s see them. Further, no mention was made of a time period and the audited period for the numbers disclosed.

Once this is done, financial analysts will be in a position to determine through key performance indicators, BBCI’s true financial position, its operations whether profitable or not, and its cash inflows and outflows for the period under consideration. In justifying a toll increase, one has to determine and evaluate BBCI’s returns on equity and on assets, its net operating margin of income or loss, its debt to equity relationship, its long-term debt to total capitalization, to mention only a few. Further, on shareholders’ equity, if there are preferred stockholders, were any dividends paid? If so, how much to date?

The Public Utilities Commission is required to approve the tariffs from GWI, GPL and GTT. Consideration should now be given by the relevant authorities to add BBCI, or perhaps to establish a Regulated Transport Authority to determine, among others, toll increases/decreases.

In closing, BBCI needs to publish its latest Audited Financial Statements which should contain important financial information required to be used in analysing and justifying toll increases. We need to be transparent. Yours faithfully, John Seeram