Belmopan. May 11, 2016. The Permanent Court of Arbitration Tribunal has not yet issued its final award on the acquisition of BTL shares by the Government of Belize (GOB).
The draft decision from the Court was released to the parties in confidence and GOB had been awaiting the final ruling before publicizing the details. However, since some details of the draft decision have been circulated to the media, GOB feels obliged to put out a statement.
What has been issued is a draft of the Court’s findings on the valuation of the 45,199,961 BTL shares which were nationalized by the Government in August 2009. Under the draft findings, they have determined the value to be BZ$5.60 per share. This compares to the $10.23 being claimed by the former shareholders and the $1.44 which GOB had originally offered.
Just prior to Last General Elections GOB agreed with the previous shareholders that it would pay the amount it proposed of BZ$1.44 per share (approx. BZ$65 million) towards the acquisition of shares. It was further agreed that if there was a settlement liability on the Accommodation Agreements, that will be used in Belize on projects to be agreed upon by the previous shareholders/GOB.
Therefore, from the draft valuation of $5.60 per share, only 40% or $2.24 is directly attributable to the share value which is only $0.80 more than what GOB offered. GOB sold those shares for $5.00 per share.
The additional amount being paid that is attributable to the Accommodation Agreements is $3.36 per share or $151M which will be spent in Belize on local projects. Since acquisition, dividends earned by GOB should be sufficient enough to offset the award of Interest and possibly costs.
GOB has already paid $65M towards compensation. GOB and the Belize Social Security Board had loaned Sunshine Holdings $20M for the purchase of shares back in 2005 and these loans were never repaid. The compensation payment, therefore, will be reduced by another $20M.
The Government looks forward to the final award ruling on this matter so that we can all put behind us the PUP era of secret contracts and bad deals that threatened the economic development of our country. GOB views this draft decision as a net win for the Government but repeats that this is not the final decision of the Court.
