ECONOMIST and former Government minister Clyde Mascoll wants CLICO Holdings (Barbados) Limited to explain to policyholders why it agreed to a $10 million performance-based package with its executive chairman Leroy Parris three years before that actual performance.
Last WEEKEND NATION revealed that Parris was suing CLICO Holdings for breach of a contractual arrangement where he was due the multimillion-dollar handshake by May 15, 2008. The arrangement with CLICO was signed by Parris on May 15, 2005, and among those signing and witnessing the deal was Parris’ attorney-at-law at the time, late Prime Minister David Thompson.
Speaking last night at a Barbados Labour Party St Thomas branch meeting at Sharon Primary School, Mascoll charged that in addition to the financial troubles plaguing CLICO, many of the island’s major enterprises were experiencing financial losses, including Banks Holdings, Barbados Shipping & Trading, Barbados National Bank, LIME, FirstCaribbean Bank, WIBISCO and Almond Beach, which he said was down $20 million in profits in 2010.
He said no one in Barbados could argue that he or she was better off today than in 2008, noting that perhaps only one man could now say that.
“The average Barbadian cannot, by any measure, be better off. Whether it is their ability to purchase food . . . to pay rent . . . the ability to put gasoline in their cars . . . to pay insurance . . . to buy a policy, they cannot be better off now. This economy has declined since 2007 in real terms by ten per cent,” he said.
Mascoll noted today’s Estimates to be debated in the House of Assembly would do nothing for Barbados.
He said Government had decided to understate its level of expenditure. He added since last year Government had deliberately underbudgeted for entities such as the Barbados Water Authority, University of the West Indies, Barbados Transport Board and the Sanitation Service Authority, in order to make the figures appear better than they actually were.
