Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn.
THERE will be further reforms to be taken at the Caribbean
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
So says Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn, who says
the CBC has to come fully into the 21st century in order to “right
size” itself in terms of being able to be self-sufficient.
His comments came as he gave an overview of the financial position
facing the island’s lone State-owned television station, as the
government sought approval for the borrowing of
$2 493 271 from Scotiabank Barbados Ltd to repay an existing overdraft
facility held by the CBC.
According to Straughn, “There were headlines prior to us coming to
office saying that the CBC was in debt of over $100 million, which
nobody could understand how that could even be possible for an
institution of that nature to have been able to be allowed over time
to increase a stock of debt that clearly became unsustainable.”
He noted that part of the debt relates to a Pension Fund which he said
was not appropriately funded.
“The Corporation was running huge deficits for a significant amount of
time, to the point where the Corporation was running in the vicinity
of $15-16 million per year deficit, which is inconceivable of good
order and good management of any institution, and therefore when we
came to office as part of the BERT plan we undertook a series of
reform at the Corporation.”
He noted that the operational deficit today is just over half a
million per month which the Minister said is still too high.
Minister Straughn said the cumulative annual deficit went from $73
million in 2008 to $100 517 606 by 2017. “Under the BERT the
government, CBC notwithstanding across the State agencies, the
government engaged in an exercise where a number of obligations were
written off across agencies.
“At the end of fiscal year 2019 when we did all of that with respect
to where we were, it meant the debt to CBC was just above $41 million.
After we cleaned out all of the inter-agency stuff, that was what was
left with respect to CBC.
“The resolution, while it speaks to the overdraft facility, we had to
deal with that big stock of debt which has been based on the domestic
debt restructuring... that came in 2018, those would be rolled into
one of the instruments of what was issued as new debt. And in a sense
all of the SOEs have a clean slate with respect to debt, except that
the government has taken the responsibility.”
As the government seeks to put CBC in the best financial position, he
said the next phase is for other reforms to take place, recognising
the stiff competition coming from other streaming services which has
had a major impact on revenue coming in to the Pine institution.
He also stressed that the government is still committed to ensuring
that there is access to news and credible information.
“...While all of the media in Barbados operate in this social media
environment because they have to, and I do know CBC has capacity in
that space, but there is always still the traditional avenues that
once delivered appropriately and once properly funded and staffed,
that we can see a better use perhaps of the resources to be able to
move forward. And so the restructuring of this overdraft facility for
the CBC was part of the restructuring,” he explained. (JH)