Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Saint Lucia Owns 0.16 Percent of LIAT

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would have been nice if Mr. George had been able to give the value of the share capital involved with respect to the holding of these four thousand plus shares.

The percentage share holding sound rather insignificant.

One wonders whether the reduction in flights to Saint Lucia is predicated on revenue and profitability considerations, or as punishment for, or reaction to the hesitancy and/or the quantum of the capital invested in the LIAT venture?

Anonymous said...

your questioned posed at the end of your contribution ..anon...448 pm..when it comes to liat never leave nothing out.. as to their motives and intentions to ride the political waters of small island gov..liat will never rise to a sustainable level..liat is a waste of time..dr. kenny, king, allen chastenant knows that.. gettin new airline fleets..is just putting money into another new black hole in liat's history...

Anonymous said...

In all honesty, St.Lucia needs LIAT more than LIAT needs St.Lucia. A wise government would increase our investment in LIAT from 0.16% to at least 1% or more.

Anonymous said...

What percentage of our tourism arrivals come by way of LIAT from outside of the region and from regional countries?

That up there should be our point of departure in the fact-based determination of the extent of our financial commitment to LIAT.

If LIAT cannot provide these hard-nosed data, then we should generate those for ourselves.

It is time for our governments to cease operating in the dark and on hunches.

Moreover, with without holding at least 20 percent or more of the outstanding LIAT shares, Saint Lucia remains an insignificant shareholder -- without any hope of having much of a say in the direction of the company. We must be very aware of the implications of this.

Next, would be the issue of business travel. What are the arrival figures (rates) regarding businesspeople coming into St. Lucia from within the region? What was the purpose (number and percentages) of Saint Lucians traveling abroad, especially on business -- especially within CARICOM/CSME?

MOST IMPORTANTLY, why isn't our immigration form for NOT reflecting a more heightened sensitivity regarding visitors' origin (country and nationality) and destination (accommodation by type or residence) while on the island, by compiling and reporting such data on a very timely basis to our decision makers?

It is impossible to do adequate analyses as suggested above, without reliable hard data.

Nonetheless, the larger question is this: Are the personnel in government's statistical department sufficiently well-trained, and our businesses sensitive enough to be enthused about our data collection requirements?

In the private sector, managers who care about performance rely on critical data sets to make and arrive at their decisions.

Saint Lucians continuously kid themselves when they convince themselves that gut feelings or 'guesstimates' alone, by largely untrained and those without a 'feel' for the data requirements of the entities that they manage, will provide sufficient and reliable guides to making the hard, appropriate and critical economic choices that this nation faces.