Jul 2006 Financial News

Government Considering Privatization of BWIA

Jul 17, 2006

In a General Council Meeting held yesterday at the Balisier House, Prime Minister Patrick Manning told party members that the Government will no longer be a majority owner in BWIA.

At the same meeting, Mr. John Donaldson, the party’s Vice Chairman, said “Government has decided to remove itself from full participation in ownership of the airline to have it run as a private organization.”

The shares of BWIA have been suspended from trading since November, 2005, the first application for suspension being made on November 15th, 2005. Three months later, on February 15th, 2006, the suspension order expired and the company made a request to extend the suspension for another three month period, which was accepted by the T&T Stock Exchange. However, when a second request for extension of the suspension was made on May 15th, 2006, the Stock Exchange did not concede. Instead, the matter was forwarded to the T&T Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as BWIA could not make a definitive statement as to when it would be in a tradable position.

In an article posted by The Trinidad Guardian on May 23rd, 2006, it was stated that the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange had started a process which could eventually lead to the delisting of the airline.

Source: The Trinidad Guardian (July 17th, 2006)

Gia Singh
WISE Research Team