by Sidney Sweeting, DDS

Several years ago someone who represented one of the companies that was bidding in the sale of Batelco spoke at the Rotary Club of East Nassau and the majority opinion of the members to that speech was very favourable, leading us to believe that the sale was imminent.

Then the Government of the day started fiddling with the figures with which there had been verbal agreement and eventually all the companies involved removed themselves from the bidding.

In the financial section of The Tribune of Friday, October 3, 2008 we learn that after many months of negotiation and obviously verbal agreement, leading us all to once again think that a sale is imminent, the Government of the day has decided to embark on another instance of fiddling announcing that "BTC would only maintain a ‘maximum’ one-year cellular monopoly post-privatisation" which has "dramatically reduced the company’s value and the price the clients were likely to pay"

Is it the practice of the Government of the day to treat the sale of BTC the way they have handled the issue of the fish market at the ramp at the Montagu – promise us anything and then fiddle around until nothing is done?